One December, when I was 16 or so I went to play racquet ball. I had on a tank top and wore a bandanna on my head. I was playing and sweating up a storm and my bandanna was wrapped around my forehead. I kept letting it just drop around my neck and untying it and retying it back around my head (repeat multiple times.) After a few hours, I went home and showered. Following the shower I was kinda blotchy and had a light rash on my chest – I wasn’t sure what it was so I just put some moisturizer on it.

The next morning I woke to the extraordinary itching of a poison ivy rash covering my chest and belly down to below my waist, both arms, some on my legs, but worst of all almost my entire face, neck, and shoulders. My left eye was closed shut and the right was in bad shape too.

I must have been wearing that bandanna when I was cutting the lawn at work last summer. Not only was I handling it and spreading it all over my body, but my sweat was probably spreading it too. I end up spending a day or two in the hospital.