Chasing Adventure

During our full experience into the area, I had a close encounter with fallen Sumac leaves. It has been 2 weeks, so I wanted to give an update.

The first week was absolute hell. I won’t go back through the details, but it was an unpleasant experience. The second week I was pumped full of meds, and still burning itching like crazy. By then, it had spread to my feet and lower calves quite a bit.

Oh, and the kicker? Spots started showing up on Greg. Poor thing! So, he is about a week behind me in the healing process and doesn’t have the benefit (?) of the steroids to push him through it. We have both also broken out in hives due to the stress on our bodies. Now he is going through some of the worst itching as there are spots on his upper areas, sides of his chest, lower stomach, and random places on his legs.

THANKFULLY, his Sumac spots don’t look anywhere near as bad as mine. However, I think his hives are worse. He’s not a medicine person, so he takes twice daily scalding hot showers to overcome the itching. Yesterday, he had me put calamine lotion on and said that was helpful.

In end, it has been just over 2 weeks for me and just under 2 weeks for him. We appreciate all the prayers and ask for more!

As you can see in the progression of the photos, the swelling has gone down tremendously. By Monday, I was able to put my wedding ring back on. By Tuesday, I felt like a human and left the camper by myself for the first time in two weeks. Today is the 3rd Friday and now I’m down to light red marks (praying they don’t scar) and light itching due to the still healing skin (which was disgusting).

Greg isn’t into documenting his progress as much, but he did allow me to get a few photos of his reaction to share. You can see from the photos his spots are bad, but thankfully they don’t look too angry or infected. He said every day feels better for him.

We are both believing that in the next week, it will be all cleared up on both of us!

Aside from our friends here that the wife got into some Sumac at our last campground, we ran into another friend we made that also got into it on their new property. He said it was the same situation as mine – winter, no leaves, well versed in the woods (or so he thought) and got into it decently bad. Now that we all know what to look for, it will be a huge purge of Sumac plants on both properties as soon as we see the buds and can fully identify the trees/bushes!

We are about 2 miles from a major trailhead, so hopefully can hike those trails when it warms up again! Thanks for all the prayers!

~Katie