The poison oak was hiding on my trellis. Part of it had creeped into my trumpet vine. It secretly attacked me, second year in a row.

Getting poison oak is like being ambushed by miniature space aliens wielding blister producing guns while the devil is throwing welts at you from the depths of hell.

It’s an ugly scene.

The blisters spread and pop.

And spread.

And pop.

The red, fiery welts grow and spread, too.

You itch so bad you can think of only one thing: Scratch. Yes, scratch! (Evil laughing). Scratch!

It’s enough to stop rational thought. It’s enough to stop functioning. It drives you to absolute distraction until you want to cut the offending parts off with a buzz saw and be done with it.

I could hardly write my new book. It was a struggle. I wondered if I should give my character poison oak. I didn’t. There’s a limit on how mean I’ll be to my characters.

The more you scratch, the more inflamed you’ll be. DO NOT SCRATCH.

But, you do. I did. It’s this compulsive, horrible thing that brings us to our pathetic knees. I hid my arms for two weeks.  I looked like I’d been in a fight and lost badly.

Here are my only solutions if one does contract poison oak. I am not a doctor so don’t take my word for it and don’t combine the drugs I did unless you talk to your doctor because I don’t want to get sued for drug cocktailing advice. Use your thinker on this one. Think, think, think.

Take thee butt to thee doctor’s office. My doctor put me on Triamcinolone Acetonide cream. That helped. Next time I get it, I’m going to the doctor’s immediately, not waiting a week and trying home remedies while my body goes up in welty flames. I hate going to the doctors. White coats make me nervous. Stethoscopes make me feel rather ill. Waiting rooms bring on my anxiety and trip my nerves. Go to the doctors. Say yes to drugs.

Use calamine lotion but you may want to read this first. (http://www.drugs.com/cdi/calamine-diphenhydramine.html)

Use Gold Bond. This worked and made me stop trying to scratch my arms and neck off.

Use Cetaphil. It’s the cream I use on my face. I buy it in bulk from Costco. I love it. It soothed my arms as they itched, dried up, wrinkled, itched again, dried, wrinkled, you get this very sad picture.

Consider using very hot water. I blasted hot water from the sink directly on my blistered, welty arms about three days after exposure. This helped enormously. This is controversial. One website said it would spread the poison oak, one said to do it.

It produced instant relief.  I cannot describe how glorious that hot water felt. It almost made me breathless. In fact, now and then, I had to pull my arm away from the water, breathe, relax, then stick my arm back under again. It’s poison oak ecstasy.

One poster on a website said putting hot water on his poison oak was better than sex. I would not quite agree with that, but it would be close.

The hot water blasting on my arm – and yes, I’m sure I scalded my arms because the pink area did not go away for days – smothered that itch and allowed me to think for about four hours afterwards.

Did the hot water spread it? I don’t know. I kept breaking out in hives and bumps for two weeks, but that’s probably because the poison oak was in my system and simply spreading like the poison from a nasty vampire bite would spread.

Benadryl. I have, in the past, only been able to take half a benadryl, at night before bed, because it just knocks the heck out of me and puts me to sleep. The benadryl also caused a mild depression so I have used it only sparingly for spring allergies.

So, with this allergic reaction, I started off with half a pill. It worked for a few days. Then I had to move up to a full pill every six hours. Then I started popping them every four hours. It did not make me sleepy at all. By the end of two weeks I was seriously considering taking two benadryls at a time, but my poison oak finally settled itself down.

(Note: Don’t take two benadryl. This would have been stupid. For heaven’s sakes, don’t drive if it makes you sleepy. You could run over a giraffe or a fallen star or, much worse, a person.)

I drank a lot of water and tried to eat healthy except for my chocolate.

Argh.

Here are the things I’ve learned: The urushiol oil from the poison oak will sink into your skin after about an hour and you are not contagious to anyone.  Even when those gross blisters pop and those welts make you look like a giant chicken pox you are not contagious. Also, soap from the shower kills the oil.

However, the oil can be on your garden tools or your gloves and clothes – or camping equipment and sleeping bag if you got it out in the woods – and you need to get rid of it. Some websites said to wash the clothes. I pitched the clothes and my old gardening shoes. I pitched the rakes I knew I had used in the area of my yard where the oak was.

I washed down my lawn furniture and my cutters and other gardening tools and my hose with tons of soap and water.  Then I washed them down again.

I cleaned my house and doorknobs/handles especially. Every day I washed my towels and wash cloths. This was probably a little paranoid but I could not help myself.

Nothing is worth getting this again. In addition, when I got poison oak last summer it was only a fifth as bad as this summer. Apparently the more you get it, the worse your body reacts because it sees the poison oak as a foreign invader and your immune system attacks.

My immune system attacked and kept on attacking, like a samurai warrior having a temper tantrum.

I paid a man to come and dig the poison oak out. When he was done he took off his clothes (not in front of me) and threw away those clothes.

I hope none of you ever gets poison oak in your life but if you do, I hope these suggestions will be of some help. Be prepared for about two weeks, maybe a little more, of hell fire welts from the devil and blistering from those miniature space aliens.

I feel for you, I do. Good luck.