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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/StonyGiddens on 2024-10-01 01:43:47+00:00.

Obligatory: not today, but the mistake is once again on my mind.

About two years ago, I went to northern California with my named beneficiary. We hiked along the coast and among the redwoods. It was lovely – beautiful rugged coast, tall trees, faint aroma of barbecued Ewok.

A few days after we got back, I developed a rash on my face and wrist. One of my eyes swelled nearly shut. I get contact dermatitis from Tide and other products, so I figured it was an allergic reaction. I tried to medicate with Benadryl and cortisone cream, but it kept spreading.

After a few days of intense discomfort, I went to see a nurse practitioner. She said, “That’s poison ivy.” I told her that was not possible, because I had not been anywhere outdoors for a couple of weeks… except California, but the rash started a few days after I got home. She said, “Well, then it’s poison oak. It can persist on clothing for weeks.”

I got the poison ivy soap. I got the poison ivy spray. I took repeated scalding showers and applied goo liberally. My face got better quickly, but my wrist stayed bad and then my left ankle and right calf got horrifically itchy. It was not like burning or pain, it was just an urgent need to scratch and it was always there. I realized I was ‘reinfecting’ myself.

I can’t be 100% sure, but I think I must have brushed a piece of clothing against poison oak while on our hike. I then managed to take the item off without contacting the urushiol, and then put it in my dirty clothes bag and brought it home to launder. I then washed that laundry in cold water, because that’s good for the clothes and the environment.

But cold water and detergent do nothing to urushiol. It’s an oil. It does not dissolve in cold water. Tumbling clothes around and around together in a warm dryer does give urushiol plenty opportunity to spread. Every single item of clothing in that load was exposed, and by the time I realized what happened, they had all been folded and put away.

I collected every possible item of clothing that had been on that trip or had been touched by an item in that trip – probably 70% of my casual wardrobe, in four or five loads – and ran all of it through the washing machine twice on ‘hot’. I wrecked some wool socks, but honestly I couldn’t bear the thought of putting them back on, knowing they might be contaminated. Slowly, the rash got better, though my right calf was the last to stop itching weeks later.

So okay, lesson learned, that’s all behind me – right? Except any time my right calf gets itchy – sunburn, mosquito bite – the whole thing gets itchy just like the poison oak. I got a mosquito bite on that calf in the last few days, nearly two years since the trip, and again the whole calf is itchy. I can treat it with OTC creams, but it’s still a huge annoyance.

It’s great to wash your clothes on the cold setting. They last longer! So does the planet!

But if you’re out where you might be exposed to poison oak or poison ivy, wash your clothes with warm or hot water when you get home. You won’t give half a fart about the saving the environment after you’ve spent two weeks trying to scrape it out from underneath your skin.

I do still love the environment, but I’m also really glad washed all my underwear on the normal environment-destroying warm temperature after that trip. If my man parts had itched as much as my calf did back then, I would have lost my mind.

TL;DR I washed clothes exposed to poison oak in cold water, thus spreading the poison to an entire load of clothing. The resulting exposure left me miserable for months, and the itching recurs from time to time. .