My Lips Have Betrayed Me

Sunday I did too much gardening. I do this every year and never learn. I hurt my back, which stiffened up quite painfully by the time I left work Monday evening. I also noticed that my arms itched and my bottom lip was looking a little puffy. Yippee, I thought. That expensive lip puffer lipstick I bought a month ago is finally paying off. Now my lips don't look like two old horizontal miniature string beans anymore.

By Tuesday (yesterday) morning I could hardly get out of bed to go to the bathroom, and had to take the day off of work. By Tuesday at noon my forearms were speckled with poison ivy, which informed me that soon my entire body would be covered with oozing yellow crusty pools of poison ivy. Furthermore, my bottom lip now looked like the fattest lima bean you've ever seen, only two inches long. And for all you vegy lovers, not an appetizing lima bean, I might add.

Here is a picture of my elongated lima bean lip yesterday morning. The allergic reaction to the poison ivy was starting to spread to my upper lip. This was taken before it reached it's full size of a red pepper. Fortunately for you I didn't take a picture of that.

It was probably a good thing my mouth was too uncomfortable with itchy pain to put lipstick on before I very slowly and gingerly (for my hurt back) went to the doctor's last evening, because I don't think they make a tube of lipstick that could've covered it.

And to think people actually pay to have this done to themselves. That's just wacko.

Now my back is starting to feel better and I am on a heavy dose of prednisone steroids. I took seven last night, I take six today, five tomorrow, and so on until they're all gone. I also got an epipen because every time I get poison ivy it's worse and next time I might have an anaphylactic reaction and suffocate to death on supreme throat puffiness. Thankfully the heavy duty meds have started to kick in, so now my arms aren't quite so itchy anymore, which is good because that makes me crazy and I still have the scars from scratching them last year when I couldn't help myself and scratching it felt so good I swear my arms had orgasms. My lower lip hugeness has begun to abate already, but with my luck by the time I'm done I'll have steroid-induced testicles growing out of my neck.

But I won't mind a testicle-covered neck. As long as my back holds out, I'll be happy gardening.