Gonna need an ocean . . .

July 15, 2014
You can look, but you better not touch 

Gaspar,

Thanks for asking about my poison ivy.  You’d think I’d know better, having grown up where it grew like . . . kudzu.

          Roz and I stopped at the local doc-in-a-box yesterday evening on our way back from our weekend in New York City (visiting friends); and the doc in the box prescribed some sort of steroid ointment; he even explained the medicine behind it to me, after I asked if it were curative or palliative.  More the latter than the former; it treats symptoms.  The ointment calms the immune system reaction to the "contact dermatitis," so while it cures nothing; at least, it soothes.  “You should see significant improvement in a day or two.”

I got the prescription at noon today — after physical therapy: this is another story; I'm falling apart: not only is the skin on my arms from wrists to shoulders turning into irate red pustules but the shoulders themselves are falling out of their sockets.  I applied the ointment and the itching immediately turned to burning.  (This, I found out later, is a side-effect in ½ of 1 per cent of cases.)  My remedy for that: lying down in a dark, quiet room and moaning for my deceased mother, crying out to my absent God, or, since I am neither an nineteenth-century romantic heroine or a seventh-century (bce) Hebrew prophet but a twentieth-century absurdist candy-ass, whining to my pillow and offering my id congratulations that I have a reason to feel sorry for myself.  

Part of the problem, I'm sure — who am sure of nothing — is "ointment."  I don't like ointments: they're colorless, greasy, grimy, oily, and foul and, because they know I feel that way about them, vengeful.  I've had this same stuff in a cream for a different ailment (with no problem), but I’ve trolled the medicine cabinets and can't find any more of it.  This is not to say the cream would work any better, except that I like creams, they're white and not sticky, cool and . . . creamy.

There’s quite a site on poison ivy, incidentally, www.poison-ivy.org, which tells me just what I want to hear, that:

According to the Wall Street Journal, research published in Weed Science (is your subscription up to date?) indicates that poison ivy has gotten MUCH nastier since the 1950's. Leaf size and nasty oil content are way up.

So it is not your imagination that it is worse than when you or your parents were kids.

Even less than when nineteenth-century ladies were swooning or the Hebrew prophets were declaiming.  Still, the worseness

Seems like a minor problem, all in all, considering the possible consequences of a 33% increase in CO2 in only 50 years. Since poison ivy absorbs more than its share of CO2, it is helping combat climate change. So there IS something to love about this plant.

You have to love the site.  Not only does the guy (Jonathan Sachs) sell t-shirts (which he models himself), but he adds:

By the way, every so often someone threatens me for talking about climate change, which they claim is a liberal hoax. So here's the deal: Every time somebody threatens me, I will increase the amount of information about climate change on this website. So go right ahead and hassle me. Make my day.

Recently I got a few climate-change deniers hassling me, so as promised, I am adding more info about climate change every time they act up: The planet just passed above the 400 parts per-million number. It was 280 ppm before people starting burning fossil fuel. And we can't rely on poison ivy to absorb all that excess CO₂.

Got another ignorant email about climate change, so as promised, here is more information about how real and urgent it is. You see that things have gotten colder in some parts of the US, but a lot warmer in more places. And CO₂ has gone from about 300ppm to 400ppm just in my lifetime!

And, there’s a skin-rash hall of fame.  (Not for the faint of heart, incidentally, so no direct link to it here.)

Encouraged, I am taking control of my p. i. destiny.  I drank two Coronas, took a hot shower (See here.), washed the cursed ointment off, and smeared on a concoction of calamine lotion, which I know doesn't do a damn bit of good, and benadryl cream.  Now my arms look like I spilled weak pepto-bismol on them, and I am headed for the Tower-Clock Tavern, where surely everyone that sees me will offer consolation, maybe even buy me another beer.

Delusionally yours,