Relief

It's weird. My legs don't look all that bad. The poison ivy is very mild. The chigger bites I've gotten are bothering me more than the ivy.

Helping in this fight is using better drugs.

For the first time I actually went to a doctor right away. She prescribed a strong steroid based anti-itch cream and also advised me to pick up a over-the-counter foam type cleanser designed for poison ivy contact. It really helps.

A factor for the future is a bug repellant I can leave in my car. I usually use sprays but due to the heat this summer I wasn't willing to risk leaving a pressurized can in my car. Having a DEET 40 pump spray just for the car solves the problem---and will hopefully keep chiggers away and insects too.

Since I'm going to be going tubing down the Dan River this weekend with a local hiking group (apparently we should call it a hiking and floating group now) I'll be able to give the bug spray a try in just a couple of days. Before we do the Dan River we'll be hiking to a few waterfalls around the Hanging Rock area. Temperatures are forecast to be around 90. Should be fun!

Comments

Naquillity said…
i had a terrible bout with chiggers awhile back. they itched something awful. i used some rubbing alcohol and benedryl cream. it helped a little. advil is good for the swelling. glad you were able to get something stronger though. hope it works.

sounds like you've got a great weekend plan in place. don't forget to take lots of pictures to share with us. and be safe. have a great day.
10:39 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nitroflex at home

Image
I mentioned a few days ago that I'd purchased off of Craig's List an exercise machine. A Nitroflex, to be more specific, for the grand sum of $75. The boxes you see to the left were bought by the seller as discontinued merchandise over a year ago and stored in his back yard storage shed. You might be able to see some of the bugs and such that had made their homes on these boxes. I left them out on my deck for a few days before opening them to allow the insects to leave gracefully or die in the sun. The picture to the left is the pieces from the box, unboxed, and up in one of my upstairs bedrooms. For the most part it wasn't difficult to move it around though two pieces were heavy and a number of them were kinda long and bulky to be wandering about the house with. Surprisingly, this kit didn't require any extra tools. There were two allen keys and one combo wrench included in the boxes and that was all it took to put it together. The whole thing only took about half an h...
Read more

ankle update

S ince a few people object to seeing my feet --poor misdirected souls--I have the two pictures below hidden behind links. Behold them at your own risk! *evil laugh* Actually they're not scary though the first one is a little colorful. T he first picture shows my ankle and foot from the side, as labeled. You can see a lot of general edema of the entire foot. There's also a good bit of discoloration of the ankle area and to a lesser degree the top of the foot all the way down to the toes. The side view is a lot worse in this regard than the top view. T he second picture shows the two feet from the top so you can compare the somewhat normal looking right foot to the injured left foot. There's not much abnormal color on this view but you can see the "sausage like" swelling of the left foot. It's this swelling that is causing my main problem--I can't get the foot into my boots and I need the boots to support the ankle. Damn Catch-22. Side view, looking inward ...
Read more

Ostrich poop found here

Image
I took these pictures last Fall while visiting the NC Zoo. On the left you can see what appears to be a nice polite ostrich just wandering around. This impression soon turns out to be false when her dowdy tail feathers raise up and reveal a puckered anus. Ewwww! If you look carefully, you can see that she's made a deposit on the ground. More ewwww! Feel free to click on the image to make them bigger. Details can make all the difference in these shots. In other matters, aren't those really bony legs they have? And couldn't they have a little more color?
Read more