MY SON HAS poison ivy, and I am as helpless to cure him as if he had smallpox.
His face is streaked with tiny blisters, and his eyes are red and swollen. Each morning, another angry slash of poison-ivy bubbles shows up somewhere else on his body, like wild strawberries in the spring. The poor child looks as though he's been hacking through the deadly thorn hedges around Sleeping Beauty's castle.
I took him to the doctor, where I paid good money to learn that nothing can be done. Only time heals poison ivy, and it gets worse before that happens.
They can put a man on the moon, but they can't cure poison ivy.
While Joe and I wait for it to go away, we are the recipients of all manner of well-meaning but misinformed poison ivy advice.
Friends and strangers inquire after Joe's face, and then offer their own version of the truth about poison ivy. Joe and I have heard every poison ivy old wives' tale in the land.We respond politely, then steal glances at each other and roll our eyes.
To keep his mind off the itching, Joe and I have put together a list of "facts" we've learned about poison ivy. Don't be worried if it all sounds contradictory (and yet somehow familiar). We gave up trying to make sense of it.
Poison ivy is a vine-like plant with little hairs that help it climb and cling to trees. Its three-leaf pattern makes it easily recognizable.
No it's not. It's a shrub.
You never see the poison ivy that gets you, so it doesn't matter whether you can recognize it or not.
Poison ivy turns red in the fall, but the leaves are shiny green in the summer.
Poison ivy doesn't turn red in the fall; that's poison sumac.
No it's not.
If someone is burning brush and burns poison ivy, you can catch it from the smoke.
If you get it on your clothes, they must be washed in lye-based soap.
4 That doesn't work. You have to burn the clothes.
If you burn the clothes, you can catch poison ivy from the smoke.
Some people aren't sensitive to poison ivy. As a matter of fact, they can roll in it and not catch it.
If your pet rolls in it, you will catch it from your pet.
Your child knows a kid who ate poison ivy in order to prove to his friends he wasn't sensitive to it.
If your child scratches the blisters, they will pop and the pus will get on his hands and he will spread poison ivy to everything he touches -- your kitchen counter, the neighbor's kid, up his nose.
