| I have poison ivy on my property here in Arkansas. I have had two episodes, about two months apart, with extremely severe lobster red rashes, like someone took a small hot iron and set it on my skin. The deep-red rash tended to be continuous, seemed to have the uncanny ability to spread symmetrically on both sides of my body, manifesting first by going up my wrists to the lower bicep area, and later also manifesting onto my thighs, and in a less involved way, manifesting at my ankles. It itched terribly, and I ended up using prednisone to get each episode to eventually subside, and the second episode had considerable swelling associated with it, including pooling of fluid in my ankle area. But what has me confused is that I never had any blistering, or exudate despite the serious looking redness. My exposure was to working the site around my home to reduce the foilage. Just today I am coming up to speed on PI by utilizing this invaluable site. Without blistering or exudate occurring despite many days of severity each time, could what I experienced as signs (vivid deep redness, eventually crusty, with terrible itching) have still been PI poisoning? |
