Daily Prompt: Ooze

Ooze
This word brings one thing very clearly to mind. Summer camp. Chapel. I went there with my aunt. I had a large poison ivy breakout on my leg it was oozing yellow liquid. None of the other girls would sit next to me. They just pointed at it and talked to one another about it. I told them what my mother had told me, “It doesn’t spread”.

Now, as a grownup, I know that one should not scratch oneself when one has poison ivy. Because it spreads. I know that so many people say that it doesn’t. But I do not believe them. No, I, don’t.

My mother, who is a nurse, says that poison ivy, once on your skin does not spread through the ooze. I have had poison ivy a lot, as a child. I disagree with her and with any Dr that agrees with her. I proved it through my own personal experiments.

After the instance in chapel when there was no girl who would sit next to my oozing, itching, painful, plais. I continued to be a nature lover who ventured into poison ivy. It is very different from other allergic reactions that I have had because of the blisters. I was told to leave them alone and not to burst them. Then they would burst while I was at school or some place where I could not run and clean right away. Then the next day there would be even more blisters and more yellow oozing stuff and sometimes crust. It was so gross.

Then, at about the age of fourteen, I began to defy the blister popping taboo. I popped them, with a nail clipper. Then I “dried” it out immediately with rubbing alcohol. The end of poison ivy. What used to be weeks or even months of pure torture became a few days of redness. It hardly even itched. I still use this method when I happen to get into poison ivy and have a reaction. Well…I don’t really use the nail clippers. I have also found that if I just don’t scratch it I am better off. But I have to admit that, even as a grown up, I scratch a lot, even if I don’t have poison ivy.

I’m not a nurse or a Dr. But I do have the power of observation. I have put it to use in this instance. Please do not take this as medical advise though. I am pretty sure that all Dr.s would be against popping blisters, of any kind, with nail clippers.