My oldest girl's poison ivy and then some

My poor baby girl! She just had her 16th birthday a couple of weeks ago ... my oldest daughter ...

Well the weekend after her birthday we went to the ball fields to watch my DH umpire a baseball game. They had a great little playground the younger kids played on almost the whole time. Of course they all discovered a path through the woods that were right there that a church had made as a "meditation trail." We enjoyed walking through the paths and exploring the creek (as the kids had begged me to come look at it with them). Well I finally noticed that most of the edges of the path were covered in poison ivy and my DD11 was walking all through it. So I had them stick to a certain to certain areas by the creek that had none.

Thursday DD16 comes to me saying she had a ton of ant bites. I took a look at them and discovered she had poison ivy! I started her on my herbal remedies that I used for DH when he got it last summer. It was the only thing that worked for him. She didn't like the way it looked etc so she wasn't faithful about it and wanted to try something different. So I indulged her - nothing worked. I finally told her to do a saltwater bath since the ocean clears up almost everything ... it worked on her legs but not her belly, belly button, and bra area. The next morning (yesterday) I asked to see the places that wouldn't clear up. I could tell immediately she had cellulitis. I called the doc and she rolled her eyes... but she wanted the doc to give her a pill or something and make it better so she went along without complaint.

Well we get there and the doc looks at her and says that she has cellulitis! But I caught it early enough not to have IV antibiotics the way I needed them. She had four places. She posted later to her friends online that "my mom knows what she is talking about ... I have cellulitis!" It was nice to be publicly acknowledged :)

She is now doing much better with only residual itching and the four patches are looking much better already.