What are the best treatments? I was doing some yardwork earlier this week and got nailed pretty bad. Got almost no sleep last night due to constant itching.

Calamine lotion. And DON'T scratch at it! That makes the shit spread. Resist. Taking a benadryl cap is good.

Benadryl helps and calamine helps. What REALLY helped me the last time I had it bad was Tecnu Extreme Poison Ivy Scrub. It costs about $10-$15 at places like Walgreens or CVS, it will be the best money you ever spent. The Benadryl and Calamine help to mask the symptoms a little and make the itching less severe. The Technu does that and it also shortens the recovery time. The rash will disappear much faster.

This won't help you now, but in the the future, if you get exposed to poison ivy, you have about 10 minutes or so to clean/wash the exposed area. If you can do that, you shouldn't experience any rash or itchiness.

go to the doctor and get a shot is the qucikest way to get rid of it

It's weird this subject came up. About five of my friends have gotten bad poison ivy in the last two weeks and I got it myself last week for the first time in 41, yes 41, years. I usually just bare-hand the damm stuff & never have a prob. I absolutely rolled in the stuff one night on the banks of the Hillsborough River in the city of the Gasparilla Festival when I was 15 years old while being seduced by my first older woman, a 23 year old Bugler smokin' honey from Bluefield,WV who had recently moved to Tampa. Wait, all that's another story. At any rate, that experience appears to have given me 40 years of immunity to poison ivy. When I picked up that crud last week it was above 100* & the humidity was at 80%. I would imagine my skin pores were big enuff to drive a Mack truck thru. I wonder if that's the reason I got it? Oh, and I wiped my neck with my right hand, got it there as well. Thank God I had on a bandana & didn't wipe my eyes, too.

I think electricity and burns and sticks under the finger nails are overrated as forms of torture. If you really want to get somebody to talk chain them up in a hot room and dose them with a serious case of poison ivy. They'll be begging to spill everything they know.

The good news is that the combination of calamine, Benadryl and especially that Tecnu stuff works great.