Oregon Rash and Tattoos

Hello All,

Justin here, typing while Allison makes some dinner. Well we spent a week in McMinnville, Oregon, and there are two stories to tell, both concerning skin.

After a week of being on the road and camping, we got to the Phillips' house, and enjoyed a lovely hot shower, and Allison scrubed her face with exfoliating soap and then toweled down with a nice freshly washed towel. Lovely.
Hmmm, not so lovely, as the towel had been tumble-dried in the machine with a cheap no-name fragrant drying sheet....and little did we know that she was extremely allergic to some chemical in the sheets...Within hours her face was all red and inflammed, and we were wondering what the matter was. However, still puzzled, we got on with washing all our dirty clothes and gave them a good fragrant tumble-dry. Within days, not only Allison's face, but her whole body was covered in terrible red blotchy rash which was itchy and uncomfortable and spreading. We visited the Rite-Aid pharmacy about 5 times, each time getting another brand of cream, none of which did much for the, now very unpleasant, rash. I spent mornings on the internet researching home recipes for soothing balms, including grinding up Vitamin C pills in the coffee grinder and making a paste, which seemed to soothe the skin for a few hours.
After deciding it must be the dryer sheets, we boil washed all the clothes and strung up a makeshift line in the yard to dry them. Allison also wrapped herself in the sleeping bag to avoid any contact with any sheets!

Eventually Tracy came home one day with a tube of 'Miracle Rash Cream' and we jumped on that for a few days, but still little help....only temporary relief. With the USA medical system being so costly and Allison stubbornly refusing medical help, we toughed it out, aiming to get a doctor as soon as we reached good ol' Canada.

By the time we reached Seattle on the Greyhound bus, Allison's eyes had swollen up and she had to lie down with Chamomile tea bags on her eyes . Things were getting desperate. However sure enough we made it to Canada (after much trouble with the border guard, who found us to be 'very suspicious'!) and Allison found some nice steroids and medicated cream, which has started healing her up within hours and stopped the itching....
Phew!


The other skin story is a tattoo story. Reid (our friend in Oregon) does a fine trade in home-made tattoo guns and 3 years ago did a tattoo on me (Justin) making one out of my old electric shaver, a biro tube and one of my guitar strings! So, on returning to Oregon, we decided to get our wedding rings tattooed and came up with a nice little ring design. Saturday afternoon saw Reid pull out his gun and a bottle of ink and (with the pain-killing supplied by gin and lemon through a crazy straw!) we were married indelibly under our skin. (This, of course, happened before the rash spread down Allison's arms and hands!) We called this our Oregon wedding, and grabbed some lemon meringue pie and champagne and had a nice wedding dinner. Now that's a ring that isn't coming off!


Another post with non-skin related details coming soon.
xx J&A