Lice.
It's ruining my holiday season, you guys. It's been a nightmare of epic proportions. It's the worst thing that's happened to me as a parent, and I wouldn't wish it on my mortal enemy. {Actually, I might. But I wouldn't wish it on someone who I just didn't really like}. My head itches just thinking about it.
Thanksgiving night, Bailey and Gerry slept over at my in-laws' house so Scott and I could be those assholes out shopping on Black Friday get a head start on our Christmas shopping. They spent the following day with their grandparents at the park, Chick-fil-A, and just generally hanging out and having a good time. When they dropped the kids off the next night, Scott's mom mentioned that Bailey had been scratching her head and we might need to wash her hair because they were playing outside a lot earlier in the day. I look over and Bailey is just digging the crap out of her hair. Fist-deep and scratching like there's no tomorrow. So we said goodbye to the grandparents and tossed her in the tub for a good scrubbing.
Two days later we were at my parents' house to help set up their Christmas tree {which really means that Bailey walked around admiring the ornaments and whining about how it was taking so long to put the lights on while Gerry basically just threw stuff all over the place and wreaked his usual havoc}. I happened to glance at Bailey and there she is scratching at her head again. And then it hit me.
Oh my God, she has lice. OH MY GOD, SHE HAS LICE!
On the outside, I was calm. Inside I was freaking the eff out. I had my mom do a quick check of Bailey's hair and, sure enough, there they were. God bless her, my mom drove right to the drugstore and picked up a RID treatment. We did the treatment on Bailey {and I'm not even going to attempt to explain the horror that took place--the screaming and thrashing and general freaking out from Bailey, who was legitimately terrified and has been scarred ever since} and my mom combed her hair and pulled it back in a tight braid. Done.
I texted all of my daycare families right away and emailed the school before Bailey went in Monday morning to give them a heads up that we found lice over Thanksgiving break, had treated them, and that she was good to come back to school. I get an email that afternoon from the school nurse: "Hi, Mrs. Wanner! Just wanted to let you know that I checked Bailey and she is nit and lice free. Thanks for making us aware of the issue and have a great evening!"
Sweet! One treatment and she was all good! I couldn't believe how easy it all was. I'd heard horror stories about lice and how difficult they could be to control, but Bailey was declared lice and nit free by the school nurse, so no worries over here! I happily and obliviously went about my life, feeling relieved and smug and like I must be doing something right as a parent to have dodged the lice bullet.
Until she went to a sleepover at her cousins' house that weekend. I had just fallen asleep on the couch {because it was 7:45pm and that's how I roll these days} when I get a frantic text from my sister, immediately followed by an actual phone call. "Ummm, we found stuff in Bailey's hair." Shit.
I drove straight to the pharmacy to drop $24.99 on yet another RID treatment and then headed to my sister's house. I was prissily indignant {and wrongly so}. "It can't be lice. The school nurse said she was all clear. Are you sure you actually saw something and not just dust or fuzz or something?" I stripped Bailey down, did another treatment {which was super fun since she was still traumatized after the first one} and slowly combed through her hair. Yep. Lice. Quite clearly there. Fuck.
She goes back to school on Monday and I email the school yet again to let them know that we found lice over the weekend and treated her. I get another email from the school nurse that afternoon telling me that she's been checked and is nit and lice free and so I, of course, stupidly and blindly assume that the nurse knows what the hell she's talking about. I pump my fist in the air. Yes! No more lice! It may have taken more than a week and more than one treatment but they've been conquered! Back to my normal life.
It's important to note that, up until this point, I had been completely and utterly clueless about lice. I'd had no idea what to look for and no clue {other than directions on the RID box} how to treat them. For the two weeks since I'd first found them, I'd been sending Bailey to school with her hair greased back in a tightly braided pony tail or bun and sprayed within an inch of it's life. The RID directions mentioned that, because of the bites from the lice and the chemicals used to treat and kill them, Bailey's head may still be itchy for 1-2 days after applying the treatment. Three days later, she was still scratching, so I figured I'd better check her again just to be positive that they were all gone. I grabbed a comb, a high stool, and a bright light and carefully parted her hair. I took a look and there the fuckers were, just hanging out on her neck being all gross and lice-y. Cue another internal freakout and a very vocal cursing-out of the school nurse {to Scott, not to the nurse's face. I'm not ballsy enough for that just yet} for telling me on two separate occasions that we were in the clear when we most definitely were not. I sent her and Scott off to urgent care because at this point I didn't know what the hell else to do to get rid of them and we had hit the maximum number of RID treatments that was safe to do. The doc sends her home with Permethrin, a more heavy-duty cream that should kill most if not all of the lice after the first treatment. This was on Friday.
While Bailey and Scott were at urgent care, I was online researching other methods of getting rid of these bastards and generally freaking myself out. Basically, our only option was to wet comb through her hair every single day. 'It may take awhile', the website told me, 'so be sure to have something available to keep your child comfortable and entertained while you do a proper combing'. My cell phone. Done. That thing could occupy my kids for hours.
And occupy her, it did. Thank God. We sat Bailey down just after 7pm that night. I had a bowl of boiling water, a lice comb, a fine-toothed comb, hair clips, paper towels, regular towels, and a bright interrogation-style light, and I set up my "work area" with surgical precision. I got to work separating her hair into sections while Scott alternated between stripping the beds and washing the shit out of everything and standing by Bailey's chair offering me moral support and an extra pair of eyes to search for any eggs or nits that might be hiding on my baby's head. Bailey's hair is super long. Like, just-above-her-butt long.
It took over four hours to comb through her hair. Four hours of separating and combing and literally picking nits and eggs {and 2 big, live, moving lice} out of her hair. Did I mention that I'm absolutely terrified of bugs? Like, "heart palpitations and fear sweats and a general and overwhelming sense of fear and doom" terrified. But there I was, literally living out my biggest fear while my kid just sits there watching Taylor Swift videos on YouTube. I'll give her major credit, though. She didn't whine and she sat still for a long time. By the time I had combed through and was ready to rinse her hair, it was well past 11pm. My shoulders and back were screaming in pain and my feet and ankles were so swollen it hurt to walk. She got to bed just before midnight, and I thanked my lucky stars that it was a Friday night and we could all sleep in the next morning.
We had a semi-calm weekend after that. Kept Bailey's hair pulled back. Spent Saturday morning washing all clothes and bedding, bagging up toys and other stuff that could even remotely support the life cycle of lice, vacuumed the car seats and our furniture. Went to a Christmas party. Took the kids to church Sunday morning. A nice, sort of relaxing weekend.
But then I noticed Gerry scratching the back of his head. It had honestly never occurred to me to check his hair. It's very short and coarse, and I really never even entertained the thought that maybe he had come in contact with and was housing a lovely little family of lice. I did a quick check of his hair, the whole time praying that he just happened to have an itch in one particular spot. I had just come from church, after all, and I was pretty certain that God was on my side.
Buuut, there they were. More mother-effing lice. We had a little bit left over of the Permethrin that the urgent care doc had prescribed for Bailey, so I stripped him down and coated his head with it. Fuck RID. I'm not wasting any more time or money on that shit. It doesn't work. So I sit my boy down, hand over my phone, and go live through my nightmare all over again. There were a ton in his hair. Nits and eggs and live lice. FML. Luckily, it didn't take me nearly as long to comb through his hair as it did to go through Bailey's. Just before I had sat Gerry down to coat his hair, I lost my mind and yelled to Scott, "Screw this! Just throw away everything with fabric on it. I'm sick of this shit!" Sooooo...all of the beds in the house got new mattress covers that zip closed and our playroom now has only plastic toys and furniture in it. No more comfy bean bag chairs, no more Barbies or baby dolls or My Little Pony or dress-up clothes. If there was even the teeny tiniest possibility of something in that room allowing the lice life cycle to continue we were getting rid of it {good thing Christmas is next week, because it's downright bare in there right now}.
So, by this point Bailey had been treated 3 times and Gerry had gotten one treatment. I was thoroughly distraught and disgusted and Scott was trying to keep up with the laundry and his crazy-ass wife. We had done everything we could think of to get rid of these bugs, save for shaving our kids' heads and setting the house on fire. I thought we just might be on our way to being in the clear.
But then I did a head check on all of the daycare kids the next day. And sent 2 of them home with nits in their hair. To add insult to injury, I spent 3 hours combing through Bailey's head and still found lice in there, albeit not quite as many as before. Scott stayed home on Tuesday, and I got Bailey an appointment with our regular doctor, who prescribed us a much more potent cream for her hair that's almost guaranteed to kill everything--eggs, nits, and lice. Our pharmacy doesn't stock the cream, so we had to wait a day for them to order it. I was totally cool while Scott was home on Tuesday. Calm, ready to tackle this shit and be done with it. But then he went back to work yesterday, and I lost my ever-loving mind.
He must have taken all the calm with him when he left, because I started researching again, which led me down a rabbit hole that left me convinced that these super lice were invading all of our heads, would never go away, and we'd all just have to live with bugs feasting off our scalps for the rest of our lives. I read studies that said that lice nowadays have become resistant to over the counter treatments like RID and Nix, and that the only way to get rid of them was to comb through someone's hair every single day for weeks and weeks and weeks, and handpick the eggs and nits out. I studied essential oils and different concoctions I could create to keep the lice away once we {hopefully} were able to get rid of them. I added special shampoos and conditioners to my Amazon cart specifically because I read that lice don't like the smell of them {coconut, you guys.} I looked into Lice Removal Services {did you know that these are an actual thing? Like, professionals will come to your home and treat everyone for $200 a head and it's 99.9% guaranteed to work the first time around and then you don't have to worry about lice anymore?}. Three hours into my research, I was a mess. I emailed Scott in a panic and told him that I was going to have a lice removal team come out to the house. It would cost about $700 and I was going to apply for a small personal loan to do it. I had a plan of action in my crazy little head and when Scott called me a little while later to try and talk me down {and also to let me know that he'd be stuck at work until 9pm so it was on me to treat both kids' hair, bathe them both, and get sheets back on their beds all by myself} I burst into tears and hung up on him. I was a damn head case, you guys. Just saw no way out and no way of getting rid of these little pests. I'm afraid of bugs and I was convinced that we were just going to be stuck in this long, dark tunnel for the rest of eternity. Pure madness.
I loaded the kids up after all the daycare kids went home, and we went to Target to pick up coconut scented shampoo, tea tree oil, lavender essential oil, hair clips, and spray bottles. And then I went to work on their heads. Scott had picked up the potent hair cream for Bailey earlier and I slathered that shit all over her head. Combed it through and let it sit for the required 10 minutes before rinsing it out. With this particular cream, you don't have to comb through the wet hair afterwards and for that I was thankful. Between Bailey and Gerry and the other daycare kids, I've combed and picked out enough bugs in the last few weeks to last me a lifetime, and I was all too happy not to have to do it right then. So we rinse her, pull her hair back into a braid, get her jammies on, and get her settled on the couch with a snack while I tackle Gerry.
I used regular conditioner on him. Coated it on his hair, let it sit for 5 minutes while I gathered my interrogation lamp, lice comb, fine toothed comb, paper towels, and boiling water, and then got to work. And, wonder of wonders...
Not a single egg, nit, or louse was found on his head. He's free! I was so happy I cried. Again. {I do a lot of crying these days}. We're not in the clear just yet-- I still have to check heads daily, and Bailey will get a thorough combing tonight {I'm not sure she's free just yet}...but at least I can sort of see a light at the end of the tunnel. Sort of.
It's been a long 4 weeks, and I'm tired. Christmas is my favorite time of year, but I haven't gotten to enjoy it this year because I've been so worried and disgusted and stressed out over these stupid lice. We've done everything --
everything -- to get rid of them and to keep them away. One of these days {maybe in a few years}, I'm going to look back on this past month and laugh at how crazy it made me and how I felt like there was no end in sight. I now know more about the treatment and prevention of lice than I could have ever hoped to {gross}, and I can't wait to come back here and shout that Bailey is lice-free, too. Soon, hopefully. Fingers crossed!
*******************************************************************************
UPDATE:
After almost 6 weeks, I feel safe in saying that we are finally lice-free! In the future, and for those of you who may end up dealing with lice with your own kids, ask your doctor to prescribe you Natroba. It's not allowed for children under age 4, but it worked like a charm for Bailey {who's 5 right now}. It's very strong, but it was a much easier process than the RID or Permethrin treatments. One treatment of Natroba is supposed to kill the live lice, but we waited a week and then did another treatment just to be safe. The last time I combed through Bailey's hair (just last week), I found 4 empty eggs and that was it. They were empty and they slid right off, which means there's no threat of them breeding or causing more lice to appear. I'll keep doing regular head checks and will do a thorough comb through again next week just to be safe, but I'm pretty sure we're finally in the clear...and I'm so relieved!
