So early Monday evening, I noticed that I had a few strange mosquito-bite-looking marks on my upper arm. By late Monday evening, I had a whole bunch of strange mosquito-bite-looking marks on my upper arm and chest. By early Tuesday morning (say, 1:00), I was quite confident my steroids had not knocked out my poison ivy, and, a week-and-a-half after getting rid of it, it was back. By later Tuesday morning (say, 3:00), I had run out of my poison ivy medicine from my last adventure and went to Wal-Mart to buy some more. (From what I saw, the employee:customer ratio at Wal-Mart at 3:00a is about 4:1.) By even later Tuesday morning (say, 5:00), I had a much worse itch then I ever had with my original poison ivy, though oddly enough without any of the blisters I had originally.
So, of course, I called my doctors' office as soon as it opened (with this red, itchy over about 40 percent of my body) and got the earliest available appointment. After waiting for nearly an hour -- how can you be that far behind for a 9:15 appointment?!? -- my NP walked in, looked at me for about a minute, and said, "I'll bet my next paycheck that this isn't a poison ivy outbreak." While my first outbreak met all the usual poison [fill in the blank] signs -- blisters all gathered together, a relatively slow progress, etc. -- the itchy welts I had now was more systematic of an allergic outbreak, probably either food-related or somehow related to the poison ivy (while not a poison ivy outbreak, per se). Or, heck, both -- could be the poison ivy caused me to be allergic to something that I didn't use to be.
Anyway, it made little difference, as the treatment was pretty similar to a poison ivy outbreak: 12 more days of oral steroids, except now with an antihistamine Zantac kick. On the plus side, after two hours of taking the Zantac, my welts and itchyness went down to probably 15 percent of their peak, and they've oscillated between that and close to itch-free in the 30 hours since then. On the perhaps-even-better plus side, none of the steroid side effects I felt during the first course have come back so far. (I slept very normally last night.) Either I'm getting used to them or I'm counting my unhatched chickens.
Also, the poison ivy in the backyard has been sprayed with stuff that will supposedly kill poison ivy. We shall see.
--- Assuming we're still living here in five years, Benjamin will be one of the very oldest kids in his kindergarten class. I'm not quite sure what I think about that.
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
