Go to a prompt care clinic and ask for oral prednisone, or an injection in the butt if it's really bad/hard to live with.  Injection of prednisone.  In the backside.  By a cute female nurse.


Also wash your clothes and if possible anything you were in contact with when you had the oils on your skin and clothing (bedsheets, towels etc.)

Ammonia for jellyfish stings.

Carry a bottle when headed to the beach. You'll look like a genius.

This works for me.  I get PI every year from clearing brush around my yard.

Wash with isopropyl alcohol to get rid of the surface oil then wash it with soap that has jewelweed to treat what's in the skin.

ETA - This stuff works: https://www.amazon.com/Jewelweed-Goats-Milk-Soap-Poison/dp/B00NH81LU0

You’re like really smart.  

@cancard the shot & pills in combination will reduce spread and swelling drastically. The last time I had poison ivy I went to hospital,it spread all over my chest,belly & groin area. I couldn’t sleep at all it was so itchy.
It works pretty fast and will give you lot of relief.

I get a script for this if it’s not major, if it gets bad enough I get a z pack or shot.

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I've had good luck with liquid Comet kitchen cleaner with bleach.  Apply to rash, let sit for as long as you can stand it, clean off.

The chemical burns really knock out the itch.

1.  Always look cool

2.  Don't get it.  No one looks cool with poison ivy

2.  When you can't obey rule #1 and #2, get in the shower and coat yourself with dish soap as soon as possible after the exposure.  Wait a few minutes then rinse off.

3.  When you can't obey rule #1, #2, or #3.  Go see urgent care/pcm for a shot or medrol dose pack AND clobetasol ointment.  Take the pills as directed and cover the area with clobetasol then wrap in saran wrap overnight.

Just what the Doc told me when I went to the hospital for poison ivy last summer. I'm pretty allergic to it.

This is the way, and simple.

If you know you have rubbed against poison ivy, relatively soon (not huge rush, but sooner the better) go wash the area off with soapy warm water (dish soap is fine) using a wash cloth to scrub. The soap and warm water help dissolve it off and the scrubbing wash cloth is significantly better than just washing with your hands at getting oils up off your skin to be washed away.

Then consider washing your clothes and anything that the oils may have been transferred to, like your bed sheets, so you don't get exposed indirectly again, which can be confusing to figure out (and dogs can transfer it as well, either to you or sofa, bed, etc).

If you don't know that you've touched poison ivy, but you wake up at night with itching on your skin, and then realize you were near poison ivy the previous day, then do the wash routine right then (not later when you wake up in the morning), and put some hydrocortisone cream on the area. Because you've missed the early wash routine, you don't really have much time to waste getting that oil off. Should be good to go the next day.

It's a matter of how long those oils are on the skin, and if long enough, you get redness, and potentially blistering in addition to the initial itching. With those later effects, you just have to ride it out and treat symptoms with maybe some hydrocortisone cream and keeping the blistering regions clean to avoid infection (could use gauze and betadyne to kill germs). I suppose you could take oral predisone for severe, large area exposure, but hopefully that's not your situation as you want to minimize steroid use (predisone is much stronger than topical hydrocortisone, so effective but maybe more than required or desired in most cases since it hits all your organs, not just the local itchy area, also inhibiting the normal pituitary-adrenal axis), and they require getting a script. Antihistamines might help prevent itching before a reaction, somewhat, but not too much effect after you've got blisters, etc.

I personally don't think hot water is necessary, nor bleach, nor excessive scratching and some other so-called home remedies. Heat tends to release histamine in the skin (why you get red after a hot, hot shower), so not really too helpful. I think warm water  may help dissolve the oils a bit, but not release too much histamine (unlike hot water). Cold water is OK and less likely to release histamine, but you might have to scrub longer than with warm water, just like dish washing.

Best practice is to know what it looks like, dress accordingly if you need to work there, and scrub down in a shower directly afterwards to be on the safe side...in other words prevent it rather than trying to treat the severe effects later, which isn't going to help much.

Earlier in the thread when I said I had a little spot on my arm, the new few days I had more and more show up on my midsection. I had been mowing and I guess it blew into my shirt. I took a shower immediately when I got home, still had about a dozen small spots show up. Still a rash but no irritation any more.

Rubbing alcohol after playing in it could prevent but I know that doesn't help now


I never got it (knock on wood)