Well, I treated all my patients that came into the ER with a Medrol dose pack. A tapering dose of oral corticosteroids and gave them an injection of Solumedrol to boost and work a little faster.
'Poison ivy' is your body's reaction to the oil from the poison ivy plant. The reason that steroids work is that they suppress your immune system and stop your body from attacking and reacting so badly to the oil on your skin.
Yes, you can "catch" it from anyone or anything for that matter. But you don't catch it like a disease, you simply contact the oil on the other person and then you end up wiping it around on yourself. It takes very tiny quantities of the allergen or oil to cause a reaction in most people. People often get it from dogs who have been running in the woods and then rub up against their legs. Also, a child or adult for that matter can spread the oil to their eyes by rubbing their eyes. This is a real pain, because when the eyes are involved, the relatively simple but aggrivating problem, can become almost debilitatingly painful.
If you have it, make sure that you wash everywhere incredibly thoroughly. Also, make sure that you wash your clothes separately and very thoroughly, because you can just reinnoculate your body by rewearing your clothes, or you can transfer a small amount from your clothes to other clothing, thereby "giving" it to someone else. Calamine lotion helps with the itching and oatmeal and Aveeno baths tend to help as well, but there is not alot else than can be done. You just have to wait until the allergen "wears off" so your body will stop reacting so badly. Topical hydrocortisone cream like "Cortaid" may help some, but not usually. Other stronger topical steroid creams not OTC may help, but they should have prescribed them if they thought that they would be useful.
As far as whether there is a shortage or not of the steroids. I just don't know. I havn't done any ER work for about a year or so. I havn't heard about anything, and I order some IV steroids for some of the procedures that I do, but no one has told me about a shortage. That doesn't mean there isn't, but it seems odd that your docs wouldn't give you such a relativly straightforward medication if they thought you needed it or if it was available.
<small>[ October 09, 2002, 04:06 PM: Message edited by: Formerly Confused ]</small>
