Thank you thank you for your lovely responses to my last post. I wanted to mention too that we have tried a CPAP machine in the past and it does help a little, but at some point during the night, frustrated by having the mask on his face, he pulls it off. But we should try it again. He’s going to make an appointment to see if he can try some more drugs. I try not to nag him about it. It’s hard.
Anyway…on to slightly less crappy topics. Emphasis on the slightly.
There really aren't any pictures that come up when you google "funny head lice" Know why? It's not funny! *Stomps off to boil bed sheets*
Last weekend we found lice on Ivy. She’d been complaining that she was itchy, so I treated her. I had checked her hair a few days before, when she complained her head itched and found nothing. She’d been in and out of the hot tub which is salt water and quite hot and I thought that her scalp was dry, which mine often is in the winter. But it was lice, from school I guess. Out came the lice shampoo. I called my mom, because Ivy had spent the night over there a few days prior. “OH NO!” my mom said. And then she became convinced that she’d given Ivy lice due to some long ago infestation of lice at her place in the late 80s.
The next day she sent me an email which read like a cryptic spy telegram : I’ve sent for something special from Canada. You can’t get it here. It should arrive soon. Why? Well because the popular lice shampoo RID, the $22 treatment that likely costs $2 to make (if that) is not effective anymore. Apparently lice have become immune and instead of keeling over when RID is poured on the offending hair shafts, now huff it like glue and it MAKES THEM STRONGER.
Is your head itching yet? Mine is.
This morning I got another email from my mom. She wanted me to come over and check her head for lice. When I got there, she’d just gotten out of the shower. She stood at the door in a robe, hair wet. “I’ve been up all night. I swear I can feel them crawling around. I’ve used RID and washed everything twice and I’ve thrown away all the pillows but I’m still itchy. I took off all the covers on the couch and then I cut myself on the zippers, trying to get the cushion covers back on, because they’d all shrunk and they don’t fit anymore.” So I sat her down and went through her hair for a good half hour with one of those metal combs. Not one bug. My mom taught in the school district for nearly 30 years and once told me that she’d rather have pink eye or the flu than lice. Honestly, judging by the frantic state I found her in this morning, she handled breast cancer better than she handles head lice. And that’s fair enough. It makes me frantic too. It can be hard to get rid of. It’s exacerbated by the fact that the kids go back and forth to their dad’s house so if just one nit remains, it travels to the next town and infests the other home. And really there’s no sense in blaming (and I’ve been blamed, trust me) the other party because those fuckers (and I mean the lice) are hardy, hard to treat and like I said, now immune to RID. I have spent entire days at the laundromat, boiling my clothes to rags, paying $8.50 for the massive machines to put my duvet in there along with all the assorted quilts. I have bagged up every stuffed toy, every throw pillow, gassed them with toxic spray and hurled them into the garage for the requisite two weeks. What I’m saying is that if you weren’t the obsessive type before, head lice will make you so. Honestly, everyone makes jokes about cockroaches being the last bug standing after the apocalypse, but trust me that those cockroaches will have head lice, and when the ashes settle, the lice will crack their knuckles and settle in for the duration.
Anyway, I do believe we are rid of them, for the low low cost of something like $100 if you count all the shampoos, washings, and super-secret-only-legal-in-Canada potion that will be arriving soon. In other news, I may have gotten a short term contract job which is better than nothing or as my mother likes to say, better than a slap in the face with a wet fish. Which is a pretty low bar…but for sure it’s better than head lice.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Ugh. I had it in elementary school along with some other kids. My parents blamed the war which was a better excuse than lack of personal hygiene, I suppose. We all got our hair shaven right off. So awful, for girls especially.
I remember my kids had it too and they got it at school in Palo Alto. No one was shaven. We all got the treatment, including armpits and pubes for the adults. I was told at the time that the school wall to wall carpeting was to blame. The carpeting couldn’t protest so it left everyone else off the hook. Fortunately, RID worked and after that I checked them regularly and never had to repeat the process. My scalp itches just remembering all this!
Lice are the worst! I had them twice while pregnant with Neela. Don’t ask me how I got them. No one else had them at work, at daycare, at home…just pregnant me! I couldn’t use anything like RID either, so I had to try the “alternative” treatments. The first was using the special lice comb (http://www.amazon.com/The-National-Pediculosis-Association-50197/dp/B001FVR0KG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327383522&sr=8-1) which really does work better than the others for over 2 hours on my hair. Then I doused it in Cetaphil and used the hair dryer to dry it to a crisp. I have really thick hair and it was long at the time so it took hours to dry it with all of that cetaphil crap in it. And then they came back. I tried listerine the second time. Again drying it to a crisp to fry those f*ckers. My boss checked my hair daily (she has 2 school aged girls who’ve had lice before) and removed the nits by hand. Yes, I have the best boss in the world. I HATE LICE! I would even take a migraine over lice. Once you have them you will never think of an itchy head the same way again…
It is a difficult adjustment to the CPAP. I’d say it took a month or longer before my husband adjusted to it. My boss said it took that long for her as well. Both have said it’s a godsend, though.
Lice!! So awful, although now, at least here in Omaha, they are not allowed to send kids home because it does nothing to stop the spread and it’s so stigmatizing for the kiddos, it’s simply mean. We only had one bought, when I was in high school, my sisters in elementary school (one still at home) and we would sit with mom on the sofa, my on the floor on pillows and one of my sisters in front of me on the floor picking through hair. And my dad NEVER got those damn bugs, and we all still hate him for it 20 years later.
Hmm, bout, not bought. And me, not my. Coffee has obviously not kicked in yet!
Nothing to add about head lice. But I’m on CPAP, and although the adjustment is slow, it is well worth it in the end. I used it off and on for over a year before I settled down, accepted I had to get used to it, and started using it daily, without ripping it off in the middle of the night. My husband, who both wanted me in a better mood and wanted to be able to sleep himself, helped. If I took it off, he put it back on me. Still does. Use the humidifier also. So that is my two cents. Good luck!
When my family kept foster children in the late 80′s we had a couple that came and brought lice into the house. My sister had one of those huge 80′s perms that were popular, and apparently that’s head lice heaven. So my sister’s at school, and one of the kids says “There’s a bug in your hair” and she got sent to the school nurse and then sent home for having lice. Like we weren’t alreay pretty much social outcasts.
This was 20+ years ago, and RID didn’t work then either. You ever heard the expression calling someone a “nit picker”? Well, a nit is an egg laid on the base of the hair by the lice. My mom had us wash in RID (kills the lice not the eggs) and then she went over our scalps, hair by hair, picking the nits off of the base of our hair. All of us had to do it, my sister and I, the foster kids, and my parents. It was awful.
Not as awful as the time I had worms, but that’s another story.
You know, one would hear these stories and think we grew up in a pig sty, but really my mom’s one of the most anal retentive clean freaks I’ve ever known!
When we got lice last year you know what worked? Mayonnaise. Like a charm. Cheap and effective but we all smelled like sweaty Easter eggs.
Olive oil works great. It suffocates the lice (similar to mayo) but a bit easier to apply. Worked for me & my daughter. I feel your pain.
We just went through this ourselves. What a nightmare! The thing that finally worked for us was dousing the hair with conditioner and using a lice/nit comb. I couldn’t believe that stuff that was still coming out of my kids’ hair even after using other treatments. This website has great information https://identify.us.com/idmybug/head-lice/head-lice-FAQS/index.html
Good luck in your battle!
Went through the lice thing three times with the kids. As an RN, I can tell you it’s not a matter of clean or dirty, it’s a matter of exposure. The school nurse didn’t listen when I told her it was being spread by the kids on the second bus run that were held in the cafeteria after school to wait. Nothing over the holidays, but right after school resumed -boom- . She finally listened after I threatened to call in county health. No problems after that. I’m also a CPAP user. Sleep apnea may be part of the reason for my heart attack. Stay tough and keep using it. Took me three months to adjust. Didn’t use it last night being away and feel like a zombie today. It’s worth the effort.