Grateful (For Survival)
It's the big T-Day! Many of my friends have been spending the month by publicly listing on Facebook or in their blogs something they are grateful for every day. I have been participating but only privately in my journal. But for today I thought I'd publicly share one of the things that I am truly grateful for this month:
The lice are gone, and we survived!!
Many of you moms have probably already been through this, but this was my first round through it. (And I will be surprised if it was the last, considering I have years of kids in school ahead of me still.)
The dreaded bugs first showed up in August in M's hair. I went into full panic mode and chose the traditional treatment route-- we bought the lice shampoo and sprays and everyone got their hair lice shampooed and combed through (even though I saw no sign of lice on anybody else). It took me seven hours to comb meticulously through M's hair, and I didn't see a single nit. Then I washed literally every piece of clothing and bedding in the house, Terence sprayed the pesticide stuff on what couldn't be washed, and we bagged the kids' stuffed animals for over a month. I followed all the directions from the lice kit and on some public health website (it may have been the CDC, I can't remember for sure now). Both said specifically that once you had been treated by the shampoo and the nits had been removed you weren't contagious anymore.
Yeah. But they didn't tell you that it's nearly impossible to be 100% that you got all the nits. And that the shampoos often don't work anymore because the lice have grown resistant to them.
Probably I missed a nit or two on M. Anyway, the lice popped up again about a month later with M. We went through the whole shampoo/comb out/laundry shebang again, though I only did M this time since I didn't find anything on anybody else. It wasn't good enough though because the lice showed up again one month later, this time in B's hair. By this time I was itching like crazy myself but I didn't know if it was psychological or real (both Terence and my mom had checked my hair and said they couldn't find anything). Desperate and depressed and going crazy, this time I did a little further research on the internet and learned some horrible truths.
1. The shampoos don't work very well. And they are pesticides-- multiple uses really up your chances of some serious side effects.
2. You won't get all the nits in one try. WILL NOT. They are very well camouflaged. But getting all the nits out is the only way to get rid of the lice. If you still have one nit left, you still have a problem.
3. There are a million and one "home remedies" on the internet and people have used all of them and more only to still battle lice for months and sometimes years. These can be persistent little bugs.
4. Schools will not send your kids (or anyone else's kids) home if they have lice-- the APA recommends that the schools revoke any "no nits" policies since lice are only a nuisance and not a major health threat. That means if you have an outbreak at school your kids are likely to get them over and over. You don't build immunity to lice. When you get rid of them, you can just get them over again from where you got them the first time.
I had no idea where M had first gotten them, but it was probably at school. That's the common place usually. But all this was so depressing and overwhelming I decided to call in the experts. We made an appointment with Lice Doctors and that very day we had a cheerful young woman come and comb through all our hair. We shaved all the boys' heads (Terence did himself too), but our lice lady found lice on B, M, and myself. She said we had mild cases, but still. . . it was a blow. She smothered our heads in olive oil, combed everything out with a good quality metal lice comb, and then we washed our hair with dish soap. We were instructed to repeat this process every night for two weeks, and every other day the third week.
It was a LONG three weeks. But we got into a routine. Every night I would liberally coat our hair in olive oil and top with a plastic cap. In the morning I would comb all our hair section by section with a lice comb, and then do a mountain of laundry. We vacuumed everywhere frequently to pick up nits or lice that might have gotten off of us.
The funny thing was that it actually brought the girls and I closer. We had this bond of going through something together, and I had at least an hour of combing each day with them where we could chat without distractions.
Once the three weeks were over I found no sign of nits or lice anywhere. I'm a tad paranoid though. I know there is always the possibility of getting them again. (My sister Camie teaches an after school program in LA and seventeen of her kids currently have lice. Out of twenty-six or so. Sounds like an epidemic to me.) Right now everybody in my house gets thoroughly checked once a week. Should they show up again, we will catch them quickly.
Still, I'm grateful for the experience since I learned a ton, and I'm less stressed since I know if it happens again, we'll survive it and it won't last forever. But most of all, I'm grateful that for now our home is lice free!!
The lice are gone, and we survived!!
Many of you moms have probably already been through this, but this was my first round through it. (And I will be surprised if it was the last, considering I have years of kids in school ahead of me still.)
The dreaded bugs first showed up in August in M's hair. I went into full panic mode and chose the traditional treatment route-- we bought the lice shampoo and sprays and everyone got their hair lice shampooed and combed through (even though I saw no sign of lice on anybody else). It took me seven hours to comb meticulously through M's hair, and I didn't see a single nit. Then I washed literally every piece of clothing and bedding in the house, Terence sprayed the pesticide stuff on what couldn't be washed, and we bagged the kids' stuffed animals for over a month. I followed all the directions from the lice kit and on some public health website (it may have been the CDC, I can't remember for sure now). Both said specifically that once you had been treated by the shampoo and the nits had been removed you weren't contagious anymore.
Yeah. But they didn't tell you that it's nearly impossible to be 100% that you got all the nits. And that the shampoos often don't work anymore because the lice have grown resistant to them.
Probably I missed a nit or two on M. Anyway, the lice popped up again about a month later with M. We went through the whole shampoo/comb out/laundry shebang again, though I only did M this time since I didn't find anything on anybody else. It wasn't good enough though because the lice showed up again one month later, this time in B's hair. By this time I was itching like crazy myself but I didn't know if it was psychological or real (both Terence and my mom had checked my hair and said they couldn't find anything). Desperate and depressed and going crazy, this time I did a little further research on the internet and learned some horrible truths.
1. The shampoos don't work very well. And they are pesticides-- multiple uses really up your chances of some serious side effects.
2. You won't get all the nits in one try. WILL NOT. They are very well camouflaged. But getting all the nits out is the only way to get rid of the lice. If you still have one nit left, you still have a problem.
3. There are a million and one "home remedies" on the internet and people have used all of them and more only to still battle lice for months and sometimes years. These can be persistent little bugs.
4. Schools will not send your kids (or anyone else's kids) home if they have lice-- the APA recommends that the schools revoke any "no nits" policies since lice are only a nuisance and not a major health threat. That means if you have an outbreak at school your kids are likely to get them over and over. You don't build immunity to lice. When you get rid of them, you can just get them over again from where you got them the first time.
I had no idea where M had first gotten them, but it was probably at school. That's the common place usually. But all this was so depressing and overwhelming I decided to call in the experts. We made an appointment with Lice Doctors and that very day we had a cheerful young woman come and comb through all our hair. We shaved all the boys' heads (Terence did himself too), but our lice lady found lice on B, M, and myself. She said we had mild cases, but still. . . it was a blow. She smothered our heads in olive oil, combed everything out with a good quality metal lice comb, and then we washed our hair with dish soap. We were instructed to repeat this process every night for two weeks, and every other day the third week.
It was a LONG three weeks. But we got into a routine. Every night I would liberally coat our hair in olive oil and top with a plastic cap. In the morning I would comb all our hair section by section with a lice comb, and then do a mountain of laundry. We vacuumed everywhere frequently to pick up nits or lice that might have gotten off of us.The funny thing was that it actually brought the girls and I closer. We had this bond of going through something together, and I had at least an hour of combing each day with them where we could chat without distractions.
Once the three weeks were over I found no sign of nits or lice anywhere. I'm a tad paranoid though. I know there is always the possibility of getting them again. (My sister Camie teaches an after school program in LA and seventeen of her kids currently have lice. Out of twenty-six or so. Sounds like an epidemic to me.) Right now everybody in my house gets thoroughly checked once a week. Should they show up again, we will catch them quickly.
Still, I'm grateful for the experience since I learned a ton, and I'm less stressed since I know if it happens again, we'll survive it and it won't last forever. But most of all, I'm grateful that for now our home is lice free!!
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