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TYLER ENNIS
Boulder climber
REDLANDS
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Sep 22, 2017 - 02:56pm PT
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Doctors it is haha
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rincon
climber
Coarsegold
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Sep 22, 2017 - 02:59pm PT
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Poodledogs are people too!
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Sep 22, 2017 - 06:41pm PT
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Was stinging nettle considered in all the mentions of possible culprits?
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Topic Author's Reply - Sep 22, 2017 - 07:56pm PT
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Five days later and you're still thinking it's a EMERGENCY???...
When I was five daze in it was a full on emergency. Agonizing. It took a couple days to really symptomize, and two more before it was clear to me that it just going to keep getting worse without treatment. Even after I got on the Prednizone it took two courses.
You know not what of you speak.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 23, 2017 - 02:28am PT
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Something like 35 years ago, I noticed a mild poison oak like disturbance around my ankles, which showed up while being a resident denizen of B-Loop.
Didn't give it much thought until some of the old-school reunions and Todd Gordon benefits, from 2006 through 2011, when I came away from a couple of those events with something like poison oak.
Now, nothing quite so serious as what Kris has experienced, but still, I thought it was funky and surprising, if not highly undesirable.
Leslie Dittli suggested it was from Phacelia. And I checked in on this thread when it first started.
 Question: is there something that the botanists could tell us about this having become more virulent in recent decades? Subtle, regional climactic changes perhaps?
Or is it just that as we age, some of us become more susceptible to allergens in general?
Again, from Wikipedia:
[The major contact allergen of Phacelia crenulata has been identified as geranylhydroquinone.]
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Stephen McCabe
Trad climber
near Santa Cruz, CA
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Sep 23, 2017 - 01:07pm PT
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Some people react more strongly the more times they are exposed to an allergen. See bee sting info. It is not necessarily that the source is changing, just your body's reaction to it. Cortisone cream helps for mild skin reactions. A small number of people are allergic to agaves and yuccas. Once stabbed by the spines, those people get more of a reaction than one would expect from just a puncture wound. A student at the garden I worked at took two to three weeks to recover from a simple stab wound from an agave even though there was no infection, just the allergy.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 23, 2017 - 01:38pm PT
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Stephen,
Thanks for your response. The thing is, concerning exposure, I was in Joshua Tree every single winter, nearly every weekend, if not living there full-time, from 1977 through 1989. That's lots of exposure, and never did I have the kind of reaction I received during my three day visits in 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2011.
See what I'm getting at?
That's why I'm thinking it has, in my case, perhaps more to do with susceptibility to allergens related to age, as distinct from exposure.
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Stephen McCabe
Trad climber
near Santa Cruz, CA
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Sep 23, 2017 - 11:42pm PT
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Tarbuster, My expertise is with plants, rather than allergies. I don’t think the plants have changed or not noticeably.
I have limited experience with stinging phacelias, stinging lupines, and nettles, though I have gotten a reaction from all three.
There are about 19 species (including subspecies) of Phacelia in my crude mapping of Joshua Tree N.P. using Calflora’s “What Grows Here” feature. On one JT trip, it seemed that every time my wife asked, “what is that flower?” it was another species of Phacelia. Phacelia crenulata, which does cause poison oak-like dermatitis, has 3 subspecies reported in JT. More than one species of Phacelia can produce the rash. The species with glandular hairs are perhaps most likely to produce the reaction, according to one source. On Calflora it does not appear that poodledog bush, Eriodictyon parryi, is present in the park. I’ve bushwhacked through Eriodictyon trichocalyx, which does grow in the park, without any problem. The bushwhacking was in the San Bernadinos, actually, but still E. trichocalyx.
I don’t know about aging and its relation to allergies. Sorry I can’t provide much insight on your particular situation.
People used to say keep babies away from peanuts to prevent the allergies. Now the guidelines are to expose babies to nuts to reduce chance of later allergies. People are still learning about allergies and I’m no expert.
People have taken small doses of poison oak to reduce reaction to poison oak. However, the packages warned against getting exposed to poison oak until the treatment was finished or the reaction to poison oak might be worse.
When I had a bad case of poison oak that was just going away and had a minor re-exposure and then the rash became really bad. When I had a dog that went through poison oak every week and I probably got regular tiny doses, I didn’t seem to get poison oak as bad over the 14 years we had the dog.
Did being away for so long make things worse for you?
I’ve heard from people who have had their poison oak reactions go from nothing to bad or bad to nothing over the years. Go figure. In high school, I got poison oak a second time from my tennis shoes that I had put away for a month or so in a locker. We had only swimming for that month, so I didn’t use the shoes. The oils must have still been on the shoes at the end of the swimming section of PE.
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Sep 24, 2017 - 08:55am PT
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Did being away for so long make things worse for you? Yes, among the potential scenarios, and using our critical thinking skills, we do have to ask after that one, don't we? Meaning, I may have phased out of my adaptation.
Well, thanks, the plant guy has spoken.
I’ve heard from people who have had their poison oak [and ivy] reactions go from nothing to bad or bad to nothing over the years. And yes, I resemble that remark as well! From bad to not quite as bad with poison oak (presumably by adaptation), and from nothing with poison ivy, to bad (haven't figured that one out).
Perhaps the opinion of an allergist or immunologist could round out a response to my query.
Thanks again, Stephen.
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