by Michele Blacksberg

Created on: June 22, 2009

Productively weeding the Pachysandra on the hill in my front yard, I watched my hand reach into a patch of poison ivy. No problem I thought until I realized I was standing in another patch and the leaves were brushing my ankles. Quick as a bunny I ran inside, stripped off my clothes and jumped into the shower. I actually had never had poison ivy before but I wasn't taking any chances.

Obviously, two days later the rash on my right shin indicated I missed a spot during my shower. The area was red, with fluid filled blisters about 5 inches long. Over the next few days it became thickened, leather like and one area in the center looked particularly unhappy. The itching started slowly at first then grew unmercifully, especially at night. I tried to gingerly scratch avoiding the center of the outbreak on my shin. Finally, I went to my local clinic and showed the doctor who agreed, the center area looked like an infection was brewing.

They gave me an antibiotic, Augmentin, which I took that night before going to bed. I woke up in the morning to a spotted rash that had sprouted all over my body due to an allergic reaction to the Augmentin. Lucky me, I started with an extremely itchy right shin and now I had an itchy rash from head to toe. I called the clinic told them what had happened. They instructed me to do the obvious, stop the antibiotic and watch to see how my shin area healed.

The shin rash did not become worse looking but the itch became more unbearable. Summer humidity and sweat did not help relieve my body rash discomfort either so I tried to take oral Benadryl at night to sleep. Benadryl usually makes people pretty drowsy only for some reason it did absolutely nothing to me. No itch relief, no sleepiness and no improvement in either rash. I must have taken 50 mg every four hours for three nights in a row before deciding- I needed to go see a dermatologist.

The dermatologist saw the shin rash and observed the body rash and thought that a short run of steroids was in order to combat both problems. He gave me a "Medrol Pack" of 5 days of decreasing doses of steroids which he said should "Do the trick!" By the time I got to the last day of the steroids, my stomach began bothering me, first just a little then for the entire day. I began eating yogurt and popping antacids to settle it down but now I clearly had developed a stomach problem from the steroids in addition.

So far, both medications that were supposed to help my situation succeeded

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