Cow parsnip

Hey, I thought everyone would enjoy a little story on the effects of a very common roadside field plant when on your skin.
It's called cow parsnip, and I've been watching it for almost two years now. It has a bright window of time during the early summer when it flourishes, then it starts losing color, juice and potency fairly steadily, with the occasional exceptional plant (second growth?).

On Friday the 11th of July, my left wrist came into enthusiastic contact with a large cow parsnip stem and flower cluster.
It was just after a rain, so everything was wet and there were many clouds, not too much sunlight.

The next morning, I woke up with a noticeable redness to my wrist and a slight soreness. I left to go camping with some kids in the National Forest. During the day, my skin got a bit redder, and whenever I passed by a fire, it got more sore.
The next morning, there was a crack in my skin, from which yellow fluid was seeping.

This is what my hand looks like normally. Of course, with the other one, the thumb is on the other side.

This is what my left hand looked like by late afternoon on Sunday about 36 hours after exposure.

Notice the dramatic swelling obvious in this picture.

This is about two hours later. Come evening, changes in condition would get fairly rapid.

A little over 2 hours later.

I soaked my arm in a big bucket of water, slippery elm, salt, and goldenseal.




The following few shots are of my arm Sunday night.



That night I put aloe vera mixed with goldenseal on my arm. After that I would put on some vitamin E and wrap it all up like an overjuicy cloth burrito.


This is just about the end of Sunday night. It brings me great displeasure to find that all of my pictures are cut off on the right side. There is a magnificent bubble just out of the frame on most of these pictures.



These show what my hand looked like the next afternoon when I got back from a program. Again, I cannot figure out how to have the entire photo displayed, so the worst looking part of the hand is obscured here.



And then two days later, the swelling finally started going down, and the bubbles started deflating.


The massive bubble at the front of my hand just started falling.

Throughout the entire time, the spot which first cracked open up in my hand Sunday morning was a dark recognizable spot.

All of a sudden the next day, all the inflation which had characterized my hand that week just vanished leaving thin wrinkles where the bubbles used to be and lots of dying skin.








It looked just a little different in the evening.







And then the next day, the burn having run it's course, the skin continued to decay.





A day later all the dead skin began to harden, showing a few cracks. The soft new baby skin underneath can be see around the edges of the hard dying plates of skin.


The next afternoon, the dead stuff started to peel off around the edges.



And then a day later it continued to progress, but slowly.





Finally, the next day, the stiff matter started to lift off.









Late that night, it finally got loose enough that I could tug it off. I'm holding the piece in my hand in this photo, but it's cut off. I apologize. It looks like a bug, take my word for it.




And so I'm left with new skin the next morning which is sensitive, and surrounded by scar-like matter, but healthy.

24 hours later and still healing.


Here is the very plant that I burned myself by two weeks earlier.




It burned constantly for the first 48 hours after blistering, and then it died down. Dropping the hand below my waist caused the blood to flow down into the area and inflame it. At one point I performed a dive roll without bursting any of the bubbles. That's about all I have to say to finish this off, hope you enjoy and learn something from this.
Some forgiveness must be given for the photo quality and the forced trimming.