Poison Ivy Nightmare Disrupted: Concierge Calls House Call Doctor!

I love the outdoors. Give me a tree and some leaves and a babbling brook and I am a happy camper (literally)! I work hard like most of us do (at least the ones lucky enough to have a job in this seemingly insane economy), and I arrange my entire year around the two week vacation that my king, er, I mean… my boss grants me every year. What I usually do is find a beautiful rural area and take to the woods like an old time pioneer. This year was different from most. I did not expect to have my hotel concierge have to call me a doctor.

I never travel alone, so this time I was with a new girlfriend. A gorgeous creature with whom I seemed to share a lot with. When I found out that she also enjoyed camping, I asked her to accompany me on my next adventure, and she immediately said yes. I was psyched. There’s nothing better than the great outdoors, unless you are sharing the great outdoors with a pretty girl. This I have found out during my many travels. It’s a fact. You can look it up in all the camping books. The only doctor I thought I’d need on this trip was me, myself and/or I: a self-proclaimed Love Doctor. Alas, this was mighty wrongheaded of me.

When we arrived at the hotel everything was great. It was a huge sprawling lodge steeped in the grandest of old-timey architecture. Even the concierge was cool. He was wearing a hat with a raccoon tail on it to lend some old west-time spirit to the place (I assumed). The idea was we were going to spend two days bush-whacking through the forest on separate day trips and in between head back to the hotel for some comfortable lodging (if you get my drift).

Unfortunately, what actually happened is I caught a severe case of poison ivy! I thought I had all my bases covered. After all, I was an experienced woodsman. I guess I didn’t notice the telltale signs of poison ivy, that is, the distinctive three, thin shiny leaves that are green in the summer and turn orange/bronze in the fall. Most individuals are only allergic to the oily type resin (or sap) of the plant. Others can get an itchy case of poison ivy from the stems, plants, flowers and leaves. This seems to have happened to me. For before we even arrived back at our friendly concierge desk my legs, hands, arms and ankles were bright red and itching like crazy!

Thankfully our concierge arranged for a doctor to come to the hotel and treat me. I was a wreck. The doctor filled me in on a lot of poison ivy–related factoids. Such as, had we had a campfire burning and inadvertently lit the poison ivy plant on fire we both could have had a difficult time breathing due to the burning resin situated inside our airways. I also learned that it can take up to five days before symptoms show up. He explained that symptoms typically arise between an hour and five days. I guess I was one of the rare individuals whose allergic reaction popped up on the hour mark exactly. Yay for me.

This article is just to alert people to the availability of hotels, and the concierge in particular, to arranging a house call when one is needed. We kept up our vacation but things didn’t go as well as I planned them to considering I spent most of the evening applying my prescribed cream instead of… well, you know.