The Year of the Louse?

So this is the year of the horse in Chinese zodiac terms.  But in my household.....it appears that we may have ushered in...the year of the louse.

For almost fifty years, I have blithely gone forth without an education on Pediculus humanus capitis, or as you might know it, head lice.






Because of this lack of knowledge, I thought it was dandruff on First Daughter's head.  She experienced itching and I saw what I thought was dandruff.  (It turns out that lice nits look like dandruff but you can not flick them off.) I began treating her "dandruff" with a macadamia hair oil.  I had enough for three treatments and, during this time, her scratching stopped. (Unwittingly, this probably did treat the lice.)  But I ran out of oil and the itching came back.  It was never that bothersome and she would just complain here and there. 

First Daughter and I went out one recent night to get hair cuts.  She was in the chair first.  The hair dresser called me over within a minute.  And said:  "She has lice."  I protested:   "No, no---it's just dandruff."  She then proceeded to school me on head lice because she had a first hand nightmare episode with one of her kids.  Her story got dramatic:  re-infestations, thousands of dollars, the finale involving mattresses thrown out on the curb.....

So I asked her to check me---I was fine.  I said I would like to go ahead and get my haircut.  "Sorry.  Your daughter can not be in the shop."  Oops.

We gathered our belongings and scurried out into the night.  Daughter sobbing; me trying to go into lice removal mode.  At the grocery store, I found a lice kit and booked it home.

Then the Abbot and Costello routine began.  First:  head check for all family members with a head of hair (Dad didn't rank here being mostly bald).  I sort of knew what to look for after the hair dresser's instructions---but both husband and I are blind as bats so it was a challenging endeavor.   Second Son was fine.  First Son had lice.

Second:  the treatments.  Putting on a gel solution; waiting; running a fine toothed comb through the hair in 1/2 inch sections.  The treatment killed the lice and the lice eggs.  The comb pulled out the dead. 

Third:  Stripping beds.  Bagging stuffies and bedrests.  Starting an endless stream of laundry.  The workload was daunting.  My education had just begun.

Quick google searches made a couple of things clear:

There would be three possible findings on the lice heads:  the actual insects crawling around, the live eggs attached to individual hair strands no further than 1/4 inch from the scalp, and, lastly, the "nits" which are the empty egg shell casings that the insect has hatched out of.  The lice eggs and nits must be pulled off the individual hair strands because they are attached with the equivalent of lice crazy glue.  After the treatment, a great deterrent to a head being a good "host" for lice is to keep the hair dirty and oily with tea tree oil preferably involved.

The bottom line learned, however, was that head lice are relatively harmless.  Of all things to get, it really isn't that bad.  (Unless you have OCD but that's another story altogether.)  You can't get diseases from them and the worst part is the scratching. 


The next day, I drove out to various stores collecting and refining my tools of the trade.  Walgreen's came up the winner in lice supply products and actually warranted two trips by the end of the day.


By the third day, I had a break in doing laundry and happened to pull out a hair from my head to find a little bump exactly 1/4 inch from the end:  a lice egg.

 

I was dependent on my blind as a bat husband to get the insects out of my head.

We have made it through the scourge but I will remain ever vigilant with oils, potions and new nit picking techniques.  A good tight French braid also helps out.

In the course of this education, I began to realize the close tie-in with an old interest of mine:  linguistics.  I am now fully authorized to use and understand the term: "nit picking".  As well as: "go through it with a fine toothed comb." Not to mention:  "lousy", i.e. he feels lousy, what a louse, the room was lousy with (fill in the blank).  Any prizes involved?