Laundry day

Since I can't do anything else, I'm going to concentrate on laundry today. When I woke up this morning, the rash on my right hand and arm was actually worse. This afternoon will make 5 days, so last night was technically still part of day 4 and I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that it peaked this morning -- at least I hope it peaked.

Although it seems to have spread a bit on my torso and legs, the only real problem continues to be my right hand and arm where the blisters had gotten large enough that I couldn't close my fingers or make a fist. (if this bothers you, please skip to the next paragraph) I tried to drain the larger ones and all but a few are a lot better. Also, I'm not in any pain and the itching has pretty much gone away, so the only problem is that the rash still covers a large area and the blisters are making it difficult to do anything, e.g., although I can type, I can't really hold a pen.

However, I can do laundry -- maybe it will help out my hand. As I said, the rash seems to have spread a bit, mainly on my torso and legs, so I'm concerned that some of my clothing or bedding may still have some of the urushiol oil, which causes the rash, on it. It probably doesn't, as I washed the clothes I was wearing really well, but it never hurts to be careful, and at least it give me something to do.

Zoe watch:

She's enjoying the nice weather. We've had some rain, and it's been cooler. However, it might warm up to the mid 80's today and upper 80's tomorrow, but after that, we should back to seasonal weather with highs in the high 70's to low 80's. So as soon as I can start working again, I should be able to make pretty good progress.

Poison ivy watch:

I walked around the yard yesterday looking for poison ivy and didn't find any, not even close to the boat. I think I just got unlucky and found the few plants that happened to be along the fence behind the boat. It doesn't take much, especially if you try to pull them up which helps distribute the oil.

The funny thing about poison ivy is that it's peculiar to North America (evidently part of the Columbian Exchange, though it doesn't seem to have taken hold in the rest of the world yet), especially East of the Rockies -- East Texas has a bunch of it, which I seemed to have found quite often as a child growing up out in the country in Crosby. I've lived all over and never had a problem anywhere else other then here and in Texas. I don't even think I got into it when I was in the Corps at Quantico, Camp Lejeune, or Fort Pickett, which are all on the East Coast and where I spent extensive time training in field. I also spent time in the field at Camp Pendleton and 29 Palms, but I don't think poison ivy grows on the West Coast at all.

The funny thing about my time in the Corps in California was that even though I was from Texas and accustomed to the heat, it was there that I had my first problems with overheating. I've had trouble with the heat a few times since, most recently here working on the boat in 100+ degree heat (with the deck closer to 120). But the first time was when we were involved in a field exercise at 29 Palms in 1982. I was a scout-sniper in a STA platoon, and our platoon commander, who was the S2 for the company (S1 is admin, S2 intel, S3 operations, and s4 logistics) thought it would be a great idea for us to go out the night before the operation and setup a OP on the side of a mountain (btw, 29 Palms is in the desert, so this mountain side was just rock, sand, and a few scrubs, and no water).

The problem was that this was a last minute deal and none of us had even refilled our canteens yet -- we were just finishing dinner when we got the order to move out. A few of the guys, including me, tried to refill our canteens as well as a 5 gallon can from the water buffalo, but were ordered to stop and get on the helo that was already turning and waiting to takeoff. So we capped them and climbed on board. Shortly after they inserted us, we all realized how low we were on water -- some of the guys were completely out -- and started rationing immediately. We requested a resupply by radio, but under the circumstances, it was already pitch dark and the exercise was scheduled to start before dawn with an artillery barrage, they said we'd have to wait.

By about 9am, the temperature was already getting close to 100, and one of our guys was in really bad shape. I think he was one of the ones who'd gotten on the helo with empty canteens. We all shared ours with him and used his shelter half to create some shade for him. He quickly developed heat exhaustion, so we called for an emergency medevac, but had to wait for over an hour since they were in the middle of a live fire exercise. They eventually sent a CH-53 to pick him up and although it had more than enough room for all of us, they only took him and a couple other guys.

I didn't mind getting left behind, since at that point I was still fine -- I was just 21 at the time and still in pretty good shape from the previous summer I spent at Quantico. However, the strain of carrying him about 100 yards to the helo on the side of a mountain in the sand, they could only touch down the rear wheels on little ridge, pushed all us over the edge and the rest of us starting to get overheated too. It didn't help that they didn't give us any water either -- by that time we'd been rationing water for about 12 hours and many of us had been completely out for at least of an hour or two.

But the thing that did get me was that the guy who needed the medevac was an NCO, and when they took him, all the other NCO's went along too. Our squad leader, who was a sergeant, defended himself saying that he only went to make sure the other guy would be okay, but I don't buy it, especially since he didn't even try to make sure we had enough water to begin with.

That left just me and a few other LCPL's, PFC's, and Privates -- I was a LCPL (Lance Corporal) -- to wait for the helo to drop him off and come back for us, which took about 30-45 minutes. In fact, at that point, I was might have been the senior guy, but it didn't matter much -- we were all heat casualties by then.

After they came back, picked us up, and dropped us off at the command post, they sent all of us to the aid station for treatment. Most of us just needed to drink some water, but the guy we'd medevac'd was soaking wet and lying in a fishnet hammock with a large fan blowing him and one of the doc's spraying him with water to lower his body temperature. I think he was okay by that afternoon, but since we'd all been heat cases, they wouldn't let any of us go back out into the desert to finish the exercise and we ended up hanging out at the base pool and drinking beer for the next week and a half.

I have to say, that other than some of my time in the med, that was the best operation I was ever on -- at least the swimming/beer part. However, I still have a very low opinion of the 2 or 3 NCO's we had at the time, but it was just a reserve unit -- I didn't go active duty until late the following year -- and I never saw an NCO out in the Fleet (I was in FMFLANT) do something like that. I doubt these guys would have made it very far out in the fleet.