Where does a homeschooler get lice?!

You can guess from the title of this post why I've been too busy to write of late. Yes, my kid got lice. And I never did figure out from where--no one else in all the people we know came forward to say that they had had it as well. (Of course I'm very glad that everyone I know was spared!!)

This was our first experience with lice, so I'm sorry to say that it took me a long, long time to figure out what it was. Poor George had been scratching his head for quite some time (weeks, at least). I had even checked his scalp multiple times, but didn't know what I was looking for. He has sensitive skin, and his scalp often gets itchy when the weather gets colder, so I assumed it was that. However, after we'd been careful to use medicated shampoo for several weeks and his head was clearly itching even more than before, I finally took him to the doctor to see what it was. Honestly, it did not even occur to me that he had lice (since I had checked his head and hadn't seen anything that looked like lice to me).

His regular doctor was busy, but we were able to get in to see a new doctor. As she looked through his scalp, I came up next to her to see. Almost right away we saw a rather large louse scurrying across his scalp. Ewwwwwwwwww! The doctor and I both jumped back in some degree of startlement and/or horror. George himself remained perfectly calm. I was trying to remain calm for his sake but was completely freaked out, honestly!

The doctor sent us on our way with instructions to get the medicated shampoo from the drugstore and to cut his shaggy hair a bit to make treatment easier, and off we went. In the car, my little stoic broke down, as he realized that he wasn't going to be able to play with his friends for at least the next few days and that on top of that he was probably going to have to get a haircut.

What really got him, though, he said, was how the doctor had reacted to him when she saw the lice. I (quite guiltily) pointed out that I, too, had jumped sky high when I saw, but he (through his tears!) very sweetly exonerated me, telling me that I didn't have any professional training to deal with that kind of situation. He further clarified: "Doctors are supposed to be prepared for that sort of thing. I don't care what she saw on me; she never should have reacted like that! If she were examining me and happened to see an ALIEN crawling on me, she should have said [imagine him speaking in a totally calm voice] 'Oh, I see, you have an alien crawling on you. Let me make a note of that.'" Sweet boy! He was so right! And though he had me laughing, and had absolved me of all wrong-doing, I felt like the Worst Mother in the World for having jumped and shrieked in horror and having no doubt contributed to his feeling so wretched!!

We went straight to the CVS, where I proceeded to buy pretty much every lice treatment on the shelves. The shampoo (actually two different brands of it), the after-shampoo, a comb-through solution, a furniture/car upholstery spray... and then headed home to use it all. By the way, if this ever happens to us again (um, knock on wood that it won't!), I will skip all of these products and go right for the olive oil. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When we got home, I read more carefully the instructions on the shampoo and on the after-shampoo treatment. I was still in kind of a fog of horror about the whole thing, but managed to figure out that the shampoo was claiming only to kill live lice, while the other stuff was claiming to kill any live nits as well. In my panic I decided to use both, though I was slightly worried about the strength of the chemicals in them (there are warnings all over them) so I didn't leave the shampoo on for 10 minutes as directed--I just rinsed it right off and then proceeded to cut his hair myself. This took a long time (he has inherited my deceptively voluminous hair, and it had been getting quite long), and I hated doing it as much as he hated having it done. He cried some more and was feeling utterly humiliated (still reeling from the doctor's reaction and also the thought that he'd be isolated from his friends for awhile, but also devastated that he had to have his hair cut because he was trying to grow it out even longer).

Next I applied the other solution, I think it was the CVS version of Nix, which I did leave on for the full 10 minutes. It promised it would kill everything on his head. Then I dutifully used the lice comb that came with one of the kits, but honestly, I wasn't getting much out, which I thought was kind of weird, since I knew he'd had the lice for weeks.

Anyway, I stripped his bed and put on new sheets, feeling rather confident that the Nix solution had rid his sweet little head of the unwanted invaders, and then started the monumental task of laundering every sheet, pillowcase, item-of-clothing-that-may-have-been-worn-since-last-being-washed (including coats and hoodies), and towel in our house--with 5 people in the family and a hot tub and pool, plus lots of guests on a regular basis, I had towels pretty much all over the house and I had no idea which ones might be harboring a nit... (In my state of denial over the end of summer, I had not yet laundered and put away all of our summer pool towels, which we don't wash with every single use).

Fortunately (um, for me, if not for her!) it was the day that my house cleaner comes, so she vacuumed thoroughly all the furniture in the house and helped me bag up in plastic all of his stuffed animals. I then pretty much quarantined him to his room, but with the welcome news that I would buy him some new books *and* he could play on the computer all he wanted, even on non-educational sites. I figured if he went to school he'd be kept home for a few days, so it seemed fair to excuse him from all schoolwork while he was being treated.

While I assumed the Nix had done what it had promised and killed everything on his head, and that the dead lice had probably all washed down the drain, I could see that I hadn't removed all the nits, the little white egg shells that are stuck to the hair shaft. (They look like tiny flakes of dandruff, but they are really stuck to the hair and won't easily move or dislodge when you try to make them with your finger.) If there were any live lice inside of these eggs they were supposedly also killed by the Nix, but I didn't like the idea of dead lice egg shells still stuck to my kid's head. The comb wasn't getting them, though. After phone calls to several friends (including my sister) who had experience with these things, and a conversation with one of the nurses at the doctors' office, and a fair amount of obsessive web searching, I headed back to the CVS to get a metal lice comb (instead of the plastic ones that all come with the shampoo and other stuff).

When I got back I completely saturated his scalp with olive oil, and then wrapped his head as best I could with saran wrap, and then made him stay like that for about a couple of hours. Poor thing! He hated it. He said it was really itchy, and the oil kept dripping down his neck. He at one point had the bright idea to make a sort of scarf for himself out of toilet paper, which worked pretty well.

After more than two hours, I set about combing through his hair with the metal comb. I didn't expect that anything but the tiny white egg shells would be coming out, since I was sure that the super-toxic chemicals I had subjected my kid to had done their job. NOPE! I got all kinds of things out with that combing! Nits, tiny-baby lice (which are light brown, like the full grown ones), and full size lice, both dead and ALIVE. YUCK! You bet I was horrified, but you can also bet that I didn't show it one bit this time! I spent about an hour combing through every centimeter of his hair, over and over, until I wasn't getting anything else out.

For the next week or so, I continued washing his sheets and blankets and pillowcases (and towels and clothes) every day, and I continued the olive oil treatments every other day, though on these follow-up treatments I left it on for only a half-hour and usually skipped the saran wrap. After less than a week I was no longer getting anything live out of his hair, but of course wasn't happy until I wasn't getting anything at all out of there, which was the case the last couple of times I did it. I will still probably do it one more time, just in case, even though it's been over two weeks since we started treatment--'cause I'm kind of obsessive that way!

Amazingly, no one else in our household got it, even though we actually often share towels (especially pool towels) and even brushes sometimes! It's truly amazing that I didn't get it, since I often lie down next to him for a bedtime chat or story at night.

So, that's my lice story. More than a week of endless laundry, vacuuming, olive oil, saran wrap, ineffective chemicals, tears.... And may you never have occasion for it to be of any use to you!