Buy the way gene, please seek medical help, if you haven't already. If you
are having
a severe allergic reaction you may be better off taking cortical steroids
for several weeks, or
pursuing some other course of action that your physician chooses, than
simply waiting things out. But if things keep getting
worse with no further exposure I strongly suggest you get checked out, if
you haven't
done that already.
Mark
At 01:07 PM 11/20/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Man - lemme' give you dumb new shakuhachi makers (like me) a tip: BE
>CAREFUL WITH URUSHI!
>
>This is the third day of my "attack", and I'm in the running sores stage
>(ugh!), up all night, every night, scratching and sloshing alcohol on the
>affected areas to kill the nerve ends. Although I could not have touched
>urushi to these areas, I have patches of rash on the back of my left knee,
>my left shin, my right side, my right ear, my left hand, my nose, my right
>eye and lips are all puffy, and - ugh! - the most sensitive of all
>unspeakable areas.
>
>It has gotten worse every day for three days.
>
>And my wife now has it on her right forearm, and she never touched urushi!
>
>And I used only TWO DROPS of urushi. Literally.
>
>Now admittedly I did thin the urushi with lacquer thinner, creating
>perhaps two or three ounces, but I have no recollection of ANY of it ever
>touching my skin. And, if any of it did, it was certainly only a
>microscopic amount.
>
>Actually, I was tinting the outside of the root section of the shakuhachi
>I'm making, like many of the Japanese shakuhachi makers do. Just to
>darken up the naturally dark area there a bit more. I was not using it in
>the bore. I'm using an Epoxy compound there.
>
>And this urushi poisoning also has a physiologically debilitating effect,
>a sort of nauseous yucky feeling. . . .
>
>Learn from my ignorance, you newbies: take care!
>
>Gene
_____________________________________________
List subscription information is at:
http://communication.ucsd.edu/shaku/listsub.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 06 2004 - 14:09:36 PST