Totally Tracie: Helpful Tip To Stop The Itch

Don't be fooled at how pretty this plant looks in the sunlight.  Inside this plant is an oil, urushiol, that will cause an irritating skin rash.  Poison Sumac, poison ivy, and poison oak contain this oil in every part of the plant, including flowers, berries, and roots.  My husband recently had a run in with one of these deceptive plants.

My husband, Pat, was weed whacking on Monday and later had this mysterious rash.  Yesterday, red blotches both large and small in size appeared on his arms.  We knew it it was an allergic reaction to the plants he had cut down.  I feel partly responsible as I was the one who asked him to trim that particular section.  We put some hydrocortizone on it, but it didn't really do anything.  Oddly enough, I had just read in Woman's World magazine, a helpful tip:

He grabbed the Dawn dish washing soap from the kitchen sink and headed straight to the shower.  It worked.  It really worked.  The rash was is still there but it is much less irritating.  The dish soap really helped to remove the urushiol.  I thought this was an important tip to pass along.  That and don't send your husband out to weed whack poison plants.