On a recent Zoom chat, I was asked to give my personal update, and all I could think of was the poison ivy I’d recently contracted. Here it is, MARCH in Western New York, and we have had some unseasonably warm days for March! The weather is usually so unstable in the month of March, that doing yardwork is normally an absolute NO. And by the way, at the time of starting this blog, there is snow on the ground, go figure.

But we did have a string of about three glorious flip flop and sunscreen days, and I put aside everything else to get outside to clean out some flower beds that are full of fall debris.

And I was in my personal happy place: outdoors with nature.

And as a CLL patient, I was dressed up like a mummy. I even had my sun hat on. So I had on long pants, long sleeved shirt, gloves….I am mainly trying to protect from the sun, but also from my arch nemesis: POISON IVY.

But I also thought, “It’s March, surely these roots I’m yanking out of the ground are harmless.” Well, I was absolutely and definitively wrong.

And I failed to clean up the way I normally do. Poison Ivy is my foe. Just plain washing up doesn’t protect me. I need to basically burn my clothes and take two showers to maybe avoid the dreaded rash.

There are two things I definitely do not like. One is life insurance policy application “junk mail” that ask, “have you been diagnosed with cancer?” (that’s a definite DENIED CLAIM kinda thing), and POISON IVY!

And my friend Lynn had asked on the meeting, “Do you think you are more susceptible to the poison in the ivy due to your CLL?” and I said that I didn’t think so. So an article with which I consulted said, 3/4 of the population reacts negatively to poison ivy. So, I cannot blame it on CLL like I would want to.

(https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150701140859.htm –for anybody to look at who doesn’t have this growing in your area)

So what I’m going to say in my defense, is, “It must be CLL’s fault because I am sometimes too tired to take care of my flower beds and things (like weeds) get out of hand.” There! I said it. And now I’ve gotten out my Tecnu which is a life saver when it comes to PI.

But all kidding aside, why, oh why, do we repeat our destructive behaviors? Perhaps because we are stubborn and hard headed. But year after year, just like I return to my flowers beds and get nicked by the ivy which loves to make my life miserable, we try to change our bad habits with new year’s resolutions and find out that we are not getting anywhere.

I do not think we can succeed sometimes until we let others into our lives to see the real US. And to allow your friends or family to tell you “how it is” and what needs improvement.

So just like I need constant reminders to not touch the poison ivy, I need friends and family to support me and let me know the positives–and negatives–on how I’m doing. This last year or so has been hard for many of us and we may have slipped into some bad habits. Like drinking too much alcohol, letting personal needs slide, or hiding our sorrow behind cake…

We might have grown bitter to the ivy that plagues us. I am not going to tell you how important faith is in difficult times as I have explained my faith in prior articles, but I know that we need each other to get out of our pits sometimes.

Is there someone you can throw a rope to this week?