July 9th, 2008

So this morning we got a phone call from Sissy’s mother. Apparently, she has quite a case of head lice.

She said she’s been itching a lot, for about a week. Of course she didn’t mention this to us while she was here.

Never having experienced such a thing, I consulted Doctor Google. And read horrifying things about chemical treatments. And heartening things about dealing with the situation. Thankfully.

I bought a special comb and inspected BB. He seems to be okay. The comb hurts him too much and he won’t hold still long enough to do any sort of reasonable job, but I just cut his hair the other day, and it’s very short. I don’t see anything there.

Similarly, I cut Gadget’s hair very short the other day as well, and don’t see anything there.

I spent an hour and a half in the shower, working through my own hair. And found nits. About six of them. Or maybe ten. I don’t know. It’s very distressing. The comb yanked out handfuls of hair, like a razor blade, and left my scalp feeling raw, so no wonder BB wouldn’t cooperate.

I’m going to go through Gadget’s next, with the comb. He had more contact with his daughter than I did, but he has so much less hair than I do. Hopefully he’s nit free.

Now I have to go through this scalp raking for a while until I am certain I’m nit free. At least I didn’t find anything hatched, which means I might have caught it in time. I hope.

Maybe I’ll just shave BB and Gadget’s heads, for good measure.

For me, I’m not ready for the Sinead O’Connor look.

And I have a lot more laundry to do.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 9:20 PM and is filed under bellyaching, health, stepkids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “icing on the cake”

bluemountainsmary Says:

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

That is really not fair.

meggie Says:

So hope you got yours in time.
I know I shouldn’t say this… but good riddance!
Hugs XX

RW Says:

Whoa. That is harsh. I remember those days …. the dread that raises up when someone says the lice word. But, you are right once you get over the first reaction and get to the task there are many resources and suggestions.

MsCellania Says:

YIPES!
I bet she arrived WITH the nits. Especially since you didn’t have headfulls. Oh the joys.
We went through this with the boys’ school. There is an olive oil treatment that works – you do have to do it more often. We used lice free on all our heads. I was so anxious to rid us of them, I didn’t read the label too closely! We didn’t find ANY lice, which was such a relief. The teachers and the morning class were full.
Which leads me to the next statement – a louse off the head is a dead louse. I wouldn’t go nuts vacuuming, cleaning, changing sheets. It’s a head to head contact, I think.