[The Kadvang]

Yeah that's where I got it. There is like crap on my face now...But they say that water could irritate it so I shouldn't use wate to wash my facer....Oh my god this is like a living nightmare.

Crap bro... sounds awful.

 

[Zack]

Daniel, never go down to that area. This has been the worst 2 days of my life, and I'm sure there is still more to come.

 

[rpk1988]

Zack, how you doing. It hasnt taken over more of your body has it. The steriods should be working by now. I feel your pain and you must not look forward to sleep...

 

[Zack]

My eyes have gotten much better, but they're still bad. The patches around my body seem to have stopped and are possibly getting better. My face is still bloated though, and that horrible yellow discharge stuff has appeared. I have been told that I should be somewhat better tomorrow, and I hope soooo much that it is true. If I wake up tomorrow worse than the night before like I have twice now, I don't know what I am going to do....

 

[Zack]

This was me this morning:

This is me now:

Sigh...

 

[rpk1988]

Dude that sucks. The poison is changing you face. In the first picture with your hood on, you look like a lost little girl. The second one you look wasted. Dude get better fast man. The yellow puse is the worst. What do you do all day, you dont go to school or have a job do you???

 

[Zack]

I have been missing school, and next week is finals. Not good timing.

The past 2 days I've been at the hospital in the mornings and then I come home and watch movies and sleep on and off. Then I have dinner and go to bed at 8 or 9. The doc said 48 hours and the oral steroids should definitely be kicking in, so that means tomorrow when I wake up is 48 hours. Plus the steroid shot, which was supposed to kick in today at around 4 (and it looks like it did, or something did). I still look bad, but it's a huge improvement from this morning. I just hope I wake up tomorrow and I'm not all messed up again.

 

[rpk1988]

Yea I made the mistake of going to school and grossing everyone out with my oozing poison. I would wrap it up in the morning, but the wrap would fall off by third period. But that wasnt my fault they had to see that. haha Yea once the steriods kick in, everything will dry up.

 

[DRB]

This was me this morning:

This is me now:

Sigh...

I look at those pictures and all I can think is

Such a sad panda.

 

[Buck Fever]

To rerail my derail, I know what you're going through...and it was even bike-related. A few years back, A buddy and I were racing each other down a huge, steep, grassy, weedy hill that had a swath cut down the middle with an industrial brush mower. Well, neither of us was willing to give an inch and we ended up colliding at Mach 4, sending us both rag-dolling into the underbrush. Guess what that underbrush was? FRESH CUT POISON OAK & IVY!!! This was right before the 4th of July and I had parties to go to, so I applied a little calamine to the obvious spots and went to the party. Well, sweating profusely at an outside BBQ in 95 degree heat does NOT help one get rid of the poison. After the party(& fireworks), I had to sit in traffic for 2 hours in my black '96 pickup- without air conditioning- on a vinyl bench seat. By the time I got home, I was covered in weepy, bloody patches and having trouble breathing, as the poison had gone systemic. I had to go to the ER where they gave me shots of steroids and some balms/salves that had to be applied after I showered in Tecnu. I ended up missing a week of work and was so hatefully miserable that I prayed for the kind deliverance of death almost daily. I now NEVER ride w/o Tecnu in my camelback.

I had a situation about six years ago when I was driving from B-More down to N.C. to go surfing with my girlfriend. 95 was jammed so we got off onto 301 through Rocky Mount and ended up driving for an hour behind a woman who was driving all over the place. I tired of it and used an opportunity to pass crossing the striped yellow line.

It turns out, that she had just recently moved to a new trailor and was having trouble distinguishing one grouping from the next. Without warning, and simultaneous to my passing her, she recognized her trailor and turned left, pushing me off the road towards a phone pole. I jerked the wheel, missed the pole, started sliding sideways, plowed through a mailbox and rolled my truck which stopped upside down in (unknown to us at the time) a freshly mown ditch of poison ivy. We crawled out through the open windows, my dog ran away (we recovered him after an hour of coaxing, he was terrified) but I remember remarking, "well, at least it's going to be easy to find all the stuff that was in the back."

After kicking the roof up, removing as much broken glass as I could and removing the oil which settled on top of the pistons, I drove my truck back home, still unknowingly steeping in poison ivy. My parents came down to get my dog and girlfriend so they didn't have to endure the heat, and discomfort of driving the five hours in that truck.

The next day, we were in the hospital. Jeanne had p.i. over about 90% of her body (thanks to her shorty short shorts and tank top) and I had it over about 70% of mine. We got blasted with steroids and missed a week of work. Her blisters were so so huge (some of them were 1/2" above her skin) and heavy that when she stood up, they would burst and ooze down her legs and arms. We had to wrap her legs in towels to keep from staining our furniture, which isn't fun in the middle of a Baltimore summer when you don't have A.C. The whole situation sucked.

I also ended up with a $280 ticket for reckless driving and following too close, which leads to another story of how I was arrested by the bailiff when I went back to NC to fight the ticket. I'll spare you all that story for now.

The moral: Never go to NC again and buy Toyota trucks. I got almost 15K on a five year old truck with 80K miles that I initially paid 18K for. Not bad.

 

[Zack]

That is really harsh. Did you guys have it on your face? I don't even really pay attention that much to the PO on my body. My face is really what concerns and bugs me the most.

I am getting better, slowly. I pretty much take 2 steps forward during the day, and then 1 step back at night. My best time of the day is the afternoon, and my worst is the mornings. Last night I slept on my back with my head elevated, and I woke up today not even close to as bad as that picture of yesterday morning. However, I still am bloated, and I don't look as good as I do in that second picture of yesterday. Today was my last day of 60mg of the steroids, and I think I go down to about 40 now.

It has been a horrible past few day. I can't even describe it. I just hope that it is all uphill from here.

 

[Spunger]

I am SO glad I am not harmed by Poision Oak. I can roll in that stuff and get nothing

Good luck on getting better, steroids will do the trick

 

[Buck Fever]

That is really harsh. Did you guys have it on your face? I don't even really pay attention that much to the PO on my body. My face is really what concerns and bugs me the most.

I didn't get it on my face, Jeanne got it on hers. She had absolutely the worst case I have ever seen.

Good luck with your recovery. Typically, once you start the blast of steroids, the mechanism of the P.O. that causes the symptoms stops working. After that, you just have to wait for your skin to heal, which can take some time. The pills/injection really just suppresses your immune system to stop the systemic reaction.

Although not as bad in scope as what my girlfriend and I had...I had this crazy neighbor...anyway, when we got back from NC, my truck was sitting in my driveway with the drivers side (the side with the most damage) facing their living room window.

Apparantly Sandy (my crazy neighbor) had been eying it for the few days it was waiting for the insurance adjuster and was wondering what was going on. We had lived next to one another for about five years at that point and had only conversed about two previous times (other stories altogether) so when she came over to ask me what happened to my truck, it was quite a surprise. Even more surprising was the fact that she was wearing a pirate like eye-patch and had a terrible rash all over her face, neck and arms.

I summarized our story for her, which gave her the segway to tell me about her eye patch...

She told me how she had been sick for some time and was "away" for a while (she was a heroin user and presumably was at a treatment facility). Apparently, she had contracted a bacterial infection which caused so much damage that she had to have her eye removed...not the point of the story though. She told me that she had climbed one of the trees in her yard to try to save some baby birds that were being terrorized by one of her many cats. She didn't know that the vines growing up the tree were actually poison ivy and she had unwittingly spread the oils into HER F'ING EYE SOCKET when she cleaned her glass eye. She casually flipped up her patch to show me her socket covered by her droopy eyelid while explaining to me that she was wearing the patch while she was unable to put in the glass eye due to all the inflammation and blisters.

I swear, I could write a series of short stories just based on my interactions with this loon.

Heal quickly.

 

[Zack]

I survived the worst three days of my life...Tecnu is going to be my new best friend after every ride.