The previous owners had a green thumb. We’ve been working to obliterate any evidence. We’ve cleared away the vines that obscured the sunroom. The crumbing bower in the back has been hacked away. So when the vines at the side of the house threatened to sneak in under the soffits we knew it was time for them to go.

So over the span of a few hours on a sunny weekend we hacked and slashed, pulling the vines off the latticework running along the side of the house. Heaping arm fulls packed into yard waste bags. The sun beading the sweat off our dusty arms and legs.

3 days later the first signs arrived. Tiny little bumps clustered on my arm. Within a week they were a mass of weeping sores. Googling anything health related is a gateway to hypochondria. Best case scenario was scabies escalating quickly to certain death.

This is the first week – it got worse

Scrolling through Google images of epidermal trauma is never an ideal way to spend an evening but I eventually narrowed it down to poison ivy.

Who the fuck plants poison ivy and encourages it with latticework to climb the side of a residence? I look for “leaves of 3″ when I’m out in the woods, not crawling up the brickwork of my suburban home.

It’s a pernicious rash that may scar for life. It’s been a hellish month already leaving me with crisscrossed swathes of discoloured bands across my arms and wine coloured stains over my legs. I’m just happy to be off the medication that left me with zero affect. Dull and blunted – which all things considered is maybe the best place to be when you’re own skin is oozing into your clothes. All I wanted was to drink whiskey and eat donuts. I ate a lot of donuts.

Because you need to know, I’m down to the last drips of my medicated ointment and no longer feel the need to scratch off the entirety of my outer dermal layer like some Asian Hellraiser. So there’s that.