Back in the height of summer, I got around to cutting some ivy (a creeper plant) from the top of the fence at the back of my garden. While ivy is good for biodiversity, it’s not great for the longevity of wooden fences. Its tenacious growth splits the slats, makes small holes bigger and can halve the life of a wooden fence.
So cutting it back was a good idea. Protecting myself was also a good idea. I had a bit of a run-in with ivy back in the spring of 1990. My hands became covered in huge, ugly, stinging, itchy blisters for the next 3 weeks. Some special cream from the pharmacy helped the healing. But that memory from 34 years ago was impaled in my mind. Since then, I’ve had no issues, because I’d learnt my lesson: wear gloves.
A lesson I remembered while cutting the ivy back on that hot sunny June morning, and the ivy branches fell to the ground next to my feet. Safe from ripping my fence to bits. And safe from wrecking my hands.
I came back inside, sat at my desk here in my office at home and looked out, admiring my work and the cleaned-up fence. And forgot about it as the week went by.
Then, on the bottom of my left leg, came some serious itching. I thought nothing of it, until the next day, when small bumps began to appear. I thought it was just a rash that would go away soon enough, as long as I didn’t scratch it. 3 days later, it had done the opposite of ‘go away’ - it was now a mass of raised blisters, with a few other little blisters nearby. I’ll spare the details of how it looked, apart from saying it looked like a chemical burn. Not far from the truth, as it happens!
I thought about what might have caused this… It must have been the ivy, but I’d been careful. With my hands, yes. With my lower legs, no. With the heat of that week, I was wearing shorts. So it was obvious to me what this idiot had done: he’d left his lower legs exposed as the branches fell. Cue a Homer Simpson “D’oh!” and a few other less mild words. I remembered that episode with my hands 34 years ago and knew I was in for an itchy few weeks.
The next day, I went to see a pharmacist during the lunch break of a workshop for coaches that I was attending. Despite it being obvious that the pharmacist would rather do anything than talk to a customer, he took a look at the wound and the surrounding area. He walked away and mumbled for me to put my sock and shoe back on. He gave me some cream for it in a brusque manner, so he could go back to whatever was more important for him to do.
I applied the cream as instructed on the leaflet inside the box of the stuff, and went back to the workshop for the afternoon, ignoring the itching and burning the best I could. And I did a pretty good job of that.
On the way home on the train from London that evening, I Googled ‘Poison ivy rash’. What came back was a ream of articles and sites about North American poison ivy. I’d been exposed to the very different-looking ‘British ivy’. So I refined my internet search. I learnt that while ‘British ivy’ is not normally harmful to human skin, around 15% of the population has an allergy to its sap. And a small percentage of those people have a more significant allergy. It turns out, I’m in that camp. Lucky me.
I read more. It lasts for 2-4 weeks. It won’t spread unless other areas of skin were exposed. The sap is colourless, so I couldn’t have spotted the stuff on my skin until it got under it. The treatment is a local skin steroid cream (thank you Mr Pharmacist, you might have got that right). The biggest risk is infection, so I read that I needed to keep the affected areas clean. I read further to a list of symptoms that would need more significant attention, none of those seemed to be happening, so I was ok.
And I relaxed. What I could do, I was already doing. It would take time. And it would itch like mad until it healed. But heal it would. And don’t scratch – doable, but not easy.
Then, on the following Friday morning, the main ‘wound’ looked bigger and more angry. I took a photo of it on my phone and sent it to my mother, who was a nurse before she retired. Her advice: on the safe side, get it seen to, just in case it’s infected. And go today.
So, off to ‘Urgent Care’ I went. (Urgent care is a walk-in facility on the National Health Service here in the UK, for injuries that aren’t ‘dangerous’ – sitting between seeing a regular doctor and hospital). While I hadn’t heard of it until 20 months earlier, this would be my 3rd visit since!
I checked in at reception and saw the average waiting time was 2 hours. I had kept the day clear of client calls to focus on other work – all things that could wait. Like me. Wait. And I waited. In the same seat for 2 hours and 45 minutes. I noticed what I was feeling, what I was thinking, what I was making of the other patients, what I thought led them to being there. Some were obvious, like a patient walking with a limp or someone with a strapped-up wrist. With others it was less obvious what they were in for. Like me. My ailment was covered up by a shop-bought dressing and a long sock.
Time passed, as it always does. Sometimes quick, sometimes slow – yet the tick-tock of the clock at reception is always at the same pace.
My name was called. And I was ushered into a consulting room.
“I’m the triage nurse,” she said “Sit down there please” and pointed to one of the chairs. She asked what was up and I took off the sock and dressing. She gave my lower leg a quick look.
“Ah ok, we’ll get you to see the doctor” she said.
“That’s not you?” I said.
“No, I said I’m the triage nurse…” and went on to say a load of medical jargon that I didn’t understand, then ushered me back to the waiting room.
I was surprised at how patient this patient was, yet still asked myself ‘how much longer…’ It was now coming up to 4 hours since I’d arrived. I kept wondering in between various mental meanderings, passing the time the best I could.
“Mr Morgan” was said aloud at last. I stood up and followed the man who had said my name into a different consulting room from before, at the end of a classic all-white medical-clinic corridor.
He asked me what was up, and I explained. He asked more and he listened. Real listening. With attention on me. He ascertained the facts, had a good look at my blistered and angry left leg, compared it to my right leg, nodded, asked, listened, and said:
“It’s already healing. Whatever you do, don’t scratch it. Keep it dry. Put nothing on it. It will heal in the next 4-5 days, a week at most, and it will be fine. If you have to go anywhere, I’ll give you some dressings to keep it clean and safe from rubbing against anything. Take the dressing off as soon as you’re back home, it needs to be dry to heal. And, I can’t say this enough, don’t scratch it. If you do, it might get infected, and it might spread.”
“So it’s ok?” I said with a lot of doubt.
“Yes, if you do what I say, it’ll be fine. Don’t worry. And if it doesn’t start to look a lot better in 3 days, come back” he said. His quiet assurance gave me cause to believe him. And the fact that he would know and understand a lot more about these things than I could, even after all my internet research.
“Ok. Thank you very much” I said, smiled and walked out.
He was right. It got a lot better as quick as he’d promised. I didn’t have to do anything to let the natural healing do its thing. Clever body. Clever skin. Natural, clever healing.
As I sit here now, shoe and sockless in my office, I can see the skin is a little darker where the deepest blisters were a few months ago. It’s only noticeable to me because I’m looking for it. Otherwise, it’s exactly back to its pre-ivy-sap self.
Until the past 12 years, I had no idea that natural healing works in a human being’s psychological and emotional worlds too. Until I saw that, I would scratch at all the feelings and thoughts I didn’t like, in the hope that scratching would eradicate them forever. All that ever did was make me feel what I didn’t like to feel for longer. It made me think more about a thought I didn’t like, giving it more life than it would warrant. And gave it more meaning than it had any right to have.
Come to think of it, our emotional and psychological system is faster than our physical one. As soon as I think of something else, the feeling I didn’t like is gone. In an instant. OK, it can come back. And it goes.
Yes, I have memories of things that bring up feelings I’d rather not have, some of them painful. Yet, seen for what it is: memory of the past as a ‘now thought’, I can feel it and know I’m ok. Whatever was happening in the past is not happening now. It’s a ‘now thought’ that brings with it the amazing special effects of emotions and reactions in my body. That’s how magical our mental and emotional system is.
And as inevitable as Tuesday follows Monday, what I think constantly changes, along with the feelings that come with the thought.
Nothing to fix. Nothing to scratch. Nothing that needs my involvement. Worry becomes irrelevant, because this amazing system shows how well I’m made.
With love and thanks,
Wyn