[MR] ingested poison ivy

[William Faleston]

I'll second the Zanful reccomendation. It supposedly has chemicals that bind
to the urishiol and help remove it. A few years back I had a massive
outbreak (note: when you are pulling vines out of a tree, be sure to closely
inspect the leaves). A 3-4 days after the outbreak started I was still
getting some spots pop up. After using the Zanful they stopped. I suspect I
had not gotten all the oil off.

If you've never had a bad outbreak, it's hard to explain the mental effects.
I suspect they are something like the effects of torture. You really do go a
little nuts for a few weeks. My particular thing was that I became obsessed
with understanding poison ivy. I did a ton of research.

The most unfortunate thing I learned was that the more often you are
exposed, the more you break out. Apparently your body creates antibodies
that react to urishiol every time you are exposed, whether you break out or
not. This explains why a lot of people "weren't allergic" to poison oak, ivy
and sumac when they were young. At some point, you reach a threshold of
antibodies, at which point the itching, oozing and gnashing of teeth begins.
After a major breakout you are full of antibodies and thus, that much more
likely to break out. This is why I am VERY wary of the stuff when I see it
now.

If I were a medical researcher I would love to do some in-depth research on
this stuff. I think there is a lot we don't know about how the body reacts
to this particular toxin. For example, ever since my big outbreak, I have
odd things happen during major histamine reactions (allergies, bee sting,
flu). In a few cases, I have developed a mild rash and mild itching in the
exact spots where my ivy outbreak was over 4 years ago! Talk about wierd.