When I used to work for the Forest Service, lots of interestng info came my way about poison ivy/oak. One thing I remember it saying is to wash off the oils with COLD water, as hot water will open your skin pores, and may actually make it worse.(posted 9652 days ago)I don't ever worry about it, myself. I worked in and around poison ivy for many years, then moved out west and worked around it, including clearing poison oak with a chain saw, getting it all over myself; no problem. Until I was 26, that is; then I was clearing a trail through a fifteen foot tall blackberry patch, interspersed with poisong oak. I was pretty shredded up all over my arms and hands. I ended up with a rash from the neck down to the toes. It lasted for almost two months, during which time I had to work five days a week in very hot weather in high top leather work boots. I suffered a lot.
The next year I also got a bad case. I then met a guy who was convinced that I had a "psychological need" to suffer from it. I told him that he was an insensitive clod, but it did get me to thinking about it. I eventually learned to control it, at least in part, through power of the mind alone. I've never used any other treatment.
How it worked for me (and I apologize to all who think this sounds a little "out there", but it does work for me, and I'm not a particularly "cosmic" type of person). I figured out that, whenever I started getting signs of poison oak--itching, rashes, blisters, etc--I began putting lots and lots of energy into it. Checking the way it looked, worrying about it spreading, doing all kinds of mental tricks to try to make it not itch (since everyone knows that you're not supposed to scratch it), and so forth.
I finally decided to stop doing that. I realized that the stuff was going to eventually go away, no matter what I did. I decided to just go with the flow. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, it itches. So now I scratch when it itches; I try not to go nuts, and scratch so much that it itches more, but the point is that I don't freak out about not ever scratching, and think about it so much that it itches more. I just think "oh well, I've got poison oak, ho, hum" And guess what? It rarely lasts more than one to three days, and never spreads much at all.Mostly it never gets worse than a mosquito bite, even when I have to clear brush with a chain saw, and get poison oak all over myself. When I have to lay pipelines, or electric lines, into a freshly dug trench, I generally get a few lines of blisters where the sap dripping roots rub directly on my bare arms, but even those go away in a couple of days.
If this doesn't work for you, I know a lot of loggers in my area swear by bleach. Sorry, I don't remember the strength, but they clean the rashy area with a bleach/water solution with a rag, and swear by it.
Don't use straight bleach, though. I knew a guy who did, and he said it cured the p.o. but the cure was much worse than the p.o.