Mystery Diagnosis!

I stick my tongue to the top of my lip and feel a bump, hmm that's weird. I guess it's a pimple that formed on my lip. Strange place for a pimple. I go inspect this pimple in the mirror and decide I will wait it out, I mean what do you do for a pimple on your lips? The next morning I feel little itchy bumps on the corners of my lips and just outside the corners of my mouth. True to form I run to the mirror again. Oh no it looks just like poison ivy. I am highly allergic to poison ivy and had multiple outbreaks every summer as a kid. So as you can imagine I know my poison ivy bumps! Now I've had poison ivy in some weird places like my eyes and hair, but never my lips. Ugh! Very uncomfortable itchy lips. I ask my hubby to grab my favorite poison ivy treatment, which is a spray called Ivy Dry, it doesn't cure the poison ivy but it does dry it up and make it manageable.
Then my mind changes to how I got it. Well I know how allergic I am to poison ivy, and in the past I have gotten it from air exposure. But that's not good enough I continue to question. Well I just planted my garden, maybe one of the plants I purchase was around it? A little far fetched. My Hubby had a hilarious story, let me tell ya, he came up with this big elaborate story about me kissing another guy and being caught red lipped. Haha very funny :(. Then it came to me, my hubby mulched up a bunch of leaves at my father in laws house, where a known poison ivy village is living near by. That had to be it because I spread the mulched leaves all over my garden. Or so I thought!
Wondering how long the poison ivy will last on my poor itchy lips I turn to the internet. I type in poison ivy on lips. All sorts of things come up, I read one story about an allergic reaction to latex. Well no this is not me I know my poison ivy, plus I hadn't recently been to the dentist to question latex gloves. I move on the the next link where my mystery diagnosis is uncovered! A blog called Silent Rant with the post called "Hooray! It's not herpes!" Haha! I start reading, and the info she shares shocks me...
Here is a quote from Silent Rant: "Do a google search for “mango allergy reaction” and you find some fascinating stuff. The mango tree is in the sumac family, with poison ivy as a relative. So if you happen to have particularly strong reaction to poison ivy, your body senses the oleoresin from the mango skin, thinks it’s poison ivy, says “we’ve seen this before, and this time we’re ready- send in the white blood cell reinforcements” which then go to town on your skin and you’re in for an itchy rash."
I bought a beautiful mango weeks ago and recently made a delicious smoothie concoction! Mango is one of my favorites and in the past I would often buy a Manga Go Go from Jamba Juice. Every once in a while I would get a few poison ivy bumps on my hands. I figured I had smelled it and my body was just reminding me I was very allergic. And the reason I didn't get an outbreak on my lips was because I used a straw when I drank one. When I drank my home made smoothie I slurped it straight from the cup!

Photo credit: Kunkelfruit Wiki
So there you have it! Mango, you are now my arch enemy! Hopefully it will go away soon! Haha!