To Bay and everybody else - I'm doing great, and I didn't breathe any into my lungs! I did go to the doctor's yesterday and after getting my lips and most of my face covered in PI, was more than happy to get two shots in my back end (steriods and something else that I can't prounounce let alone spell). I also need to take antibiotics for a week or two.
The itch nearly disappeared shortly after I got the shots. The only drawback is that I can't stay in the sun for an extended period of time because of the antibiotics (the sun does agitated my skin). The rashes on my lips and face have mostly receded, which - I'm nearly 100% as long as I can enjoy what I've been harvesting for the past couple of weeks!
I don't think that I'm comfortable putting bleach on my skin since my skin is unfortunately very sensitive to chemicals of any kind. As for the pine tar, we might actually have some of that. I think that we use pine tar for coating the goats hooves and dressing the occasional wound on our other animals. (As for the goats, I'll have to post some pictures of those - they're the Texas strain of Tennessee Fainting Goats.)
Kuska, we've actually used calamine lotion before, just used some this morning. I have bad reactions to poison ivy, but I'm glad that I don't get a reaction from stinging nettle - the yard is fine, but if I go hiking in the wild areas, I can't go a few feet without walking into one.
Nyboy, about not wanting to go to the doctors I would have to agree with Cane and Bay. Everybody in my family including me have some sort of "trust issues" when it comes to doctors too. After all, they are people too, and there are good and bad people. We've had both greedy doctors and dentists insist that one of us would need an organ transplants of some sort, or get crowns on all of these teeth -only to get a second opinion and find out that we didn't need any of that. Those doctors that were insisting that we do this or that just wanted to get more money in there own pockets! It's not that we're totally against modern medicine (It has drawbacks, as does home treatment) it's just that you shouldn't be using it for every ailment that you happen to experience. "Moderation is everything."