* * Understanding the rash

When you inhabit a body for several decades as I’ve done mine, you start to think you understand it. At least I do. Then, sometimes, you get fooled. At least I do.

Last week on Friday, I developed a mysterious rash. It popped out in several places, on my neck, on both arms near the inner elbows, and across my midsection to under my groin. My eyelids had swelled, too. The rash was red and ugly, and it burned and itched like crazy. It was so bad I had trouble sleeping all weekend.

I was thinking it was hives, and that I’d had an allergic reaction to something I’d eaten. I considered poison oak or ivy, but I hadn’t been in the woods. Besides, how would the oil have gotten under my clothing? I had no answers.

On Monday, my doctor, Rob Solomon, was kind enough to wedge me in for a quick evaluation. He wasn’t sure either, but he gave me a prescription for Prednisone, a steroid. “Take three pills of 20-mg each for the first two or three days and then start tapering off.” He had his staff make an appointment for me with a dermatologist the next day for further evaluation.

I was freaked out by this. I’m not really allergic to anything I know of, at least in the traditional sense. What could I possibly have eaten that would have caused such a reaction? One friend suggested sea food. Another suggested I might have developed an allergy to mold.

The dermatologist was sure it was poison ivy. He gave me another medication, a steroid-based cream, to be used topically.

Within a day or so, I was buzzing higher than a kite. I was stammering my speech and re- re- re-writing almost everything I wro- wro- wrote, my fingers dancing nervously around my keyboard whenever I tried to type. Oh, and I gained five pounds in two days! No wonder body-builders take steroids. Yipeee!

On Wednesday morning, half the puzzle was solved. Gabriel, a handyman who had done some work on the trees around our house, came by to pick up some tools he’d left behind. I mentioned the rash. “Oh, the trees we cut had poison ivy vines all over them.” Turns out, I’d helped unload some of the logs the prior Thursday when I returned from the office to find his pickup truck in my driveway. File this mistake under the category of, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Anyway, at that point, at least I knew where the contact had come from, but the mystery of how the oil spread to my midsection lingers on. Is there oil on some of my clothing, still somewhere around the house? (Geez, Gabriel, could you have told me about the vines before I offered to help?)

At noon, I was a guest speaker at a women’s club event in Blacksburg. Of course, I was still jumpier than a room full of grasshoppers. My heart was pounding in my chest. When I rose to speak, I did okay I think, other than repeating myself a few times myself a few times. But when I read from my books, I couldn’t stay focused. Lots of people seem intimidated by public speaking, but I typically rather take pleasure in it, enjoying being the center of attention. But my self-consciousness was getting the better of me. I think I may have drooled on my shirt. The woman who invited me said some nice things about my presentation and several people bought my books. So I suppose I mustn’t have made too much a fool of myself. But as I drove back to my office, I couldn’t shake the lingering feeling that I’d inadvertently insulted a few people and would never be invited back.

It’s a full week now since the poisoning and I’m still reeling from the effects of both the rash and the medications. My typing is twice as fast as ever before with twice the errors, and my automatic spell checker is working overtime. I try to convince myself while scratching my arms that someday, I’ll think I’ve learned how this body I inhabit works. But before I get too confident, somehow I can’t help but think I’ll get slammed again.