Jewelweed & Poison Ivy

Several weeks ago I wrote about my close encounter with poison ivy.  Fortunately, I did not contract the dreaded itch!

Mountain Man, however, the one who wears open toed shoes and shorts with no shirt while working, did. I kept warning him to beware, he kept telling me it wasn't poison ivy.  "OK" I said (all the while thinking to myself, yes it is!).  I noticed Johny was wearing a lot of calamine lotion on his legs, and when I mentioned it he said he thought he was bit by something like chiggers.  Well, that is a possibility up here, so I said "Oh, OK" (the first time).  Upon closer observation, I saw there were bumps/blisters and said "sure looks like poison ivy to me"...I bet you can guess his response..."nah" he says (of course I think to myself, "yes it sure is, and don't get that poison juice on me!")...and I say "this is poison ivy, hate to tell you, and it needs to be treated as such".  By now Mountain Man is believing me because even though the spots on his legs are drying up and looking better, sad to say there is a new patch that has developed on his arm.

We started looking for Jewelweed, knowing it grows along the road to our garden.  A beautiful plant with medicinal properties that are supposed to help the bad symptoms of poison ivy.  We were happy to discover we have both the yellow and the red blooms all over.

This is a young red bloom that has not opened yet, I love the little curly on the bottom...

Both the red and yellow grow right next to each other...

...small flowers that hang daintily from their branches...little sparkles of color along the road...

...Cool flower, I've always loved them.

Back to the poison ivy.  Be warned that these photos are not so pretty, but I would like you to see the results of our test of the effect that Jewelweed had on Mountain man's poison ivy.  Basically you crush the leaves and stems of the Jewelweed to release the juices...this is Johny's "working bowl", covered in with saran wrap to keep it moist.  The leaves are soft but the stems are quite woody and hard to crush, so I just broke them up with the knife.

This is about 2 weeks ago, after rubbing the juice from the crushed Jewelweed leaves and stems onto the poison ivy spots (this is Mountain Mans' left arm, inside the elbow)...

...same area a little while later...

...then today...

...there does appear to be some improvement, it's not as red and Mountain Man says no longer itchy.

So here is the ugly poison ivy...

...this is Mountain Man's right arm, below the elbow, inside where the "beefy" part of his forearm is...this first picture includes the remains of calamine lotion (the white stuff)...

Mountain Man (I love the man but I'm not touching those spots...in fact, I've suggested he keep his distance until all these spots are gone, no kidding) rubbed the chopped stems and leaves onto the area...

...this is after having done that...makes me think rubbing it on is not such a great idea...seems to have agitated the spots...

...but the next day it looked a bit better...

 ...the sores are not as angry looking...

So.the next day, instead of rubbing, we made a poultice by putting the crushed leaves and stems gently onto the area, and covered it with a patch...

...we left it there for two hours...

...hmph, doesn't look much better any way you look at it!  The jury is still out if it works or not, we are going to see how it looks in a few hours...I know you are waiting with bated breath:)

We also discovered that there is one little spot that he rubbed the Jewelweed on, and it actually have festered a bit.  SO NO RUBBING OF JEWELWEED!

We are now a couple weeks later, and here is my strong belief...Jewelweed may help with the symptoms if you apply it GENTLY, in a poultice.  But the ugly reality it, it takes poison ivy some time to heal, about 3 weeks.  And it doesn't matter what you do to help it along.  It takes 3 weeks!

Today's good news is the spot on his right arm are finally healing, as are the rest of the spots on his body.  Looks like there might be some scaring, but at least the ugly sores are gone.  I am not ready to get off the touch me not slogan though...I need to see total healing first!

So, as the my Dad would say the Papa in the Berenstain Bears would say, "let this be a lesson to you".  Don't get into stinking poison ivy!

And I am really sorry to say, that although I have posted pictures of the evil vine, and I think I know what it looks like, I really don't.  It seems it has several "faces", because every time I come across it and run like mad thinking "get the #@&! away from that stuff!" I find myself poison ivyless.  I guess I think "if it has 3 leaves, it's poison ivy".  Better safe than sorry!  I will continue to wear pants tucked into my socks, long sleeves & gloves tucked into my sleeves...and when I go in after trumping through the woods, all my clothes goes directly into the hot water wash, and a good cleansing shower for myself is immediate.  I'm not interested in contracting this nasty poison ivy mess!

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise