Followup: I guess I'm still immune to poison ivy
Months ago, I posted about grabbing poison ivy in the woods in New Mexico. It was a pretty funny situation, in hindsight - I had no idea that I'd touched poison ivy until I submitted the photos of my hand grabbing it to iNaturalist. Getting that ID response from the iNaturalist site was pretty funny.
The followup is that I spent the next month or so anticipating that I'd get a poison ivy reaction, but I never got one, which means that I am still immune to urushiol, as far as I can tell, and I don't get allergic reactions from it yet. If I were to go into the woods right now and grab poison ivy, though, I'd probably have a reaction - repeated exposures increase your chance of having one.
The craziest thing I learned on that trip is that you can get a poison ivy reaction up to several weeks after exposure? I have no idea what the mechanism is there - I've seen some people suggesting it's just oil transferring from your clothes at a later date, which actually seems most likely to me - but a lot of resources claim that your body can blister up long after the initial exposure. Pretty wild! I spent the next month after my trip in a heightened state of alarm.
It's possible that this was my first exposure to poison ivy. I genuinely cannot remember for sure if I've previously had a poison ivy exposure. I suspect I did, but way back when I was a preteen. I have what feel like first-person images of poison ivy blisters in my mind... but after plumbing my childhood memories, I have no strong memories of actually experiencing the itchiness. Maybe I was just super stoic?? Maybe I had a friend who kept showing me the rash on their arm?? I have no idea.
Anyway, I honestly did not expect this to happen. I spent a good week earlier this year trying to achieve peace with the idea that my hands, arms, and potentially face were going to break out in poison ivy welts. All that work spent achieving mental serenity was wasted!!