The L Word
July 26, 2011No, not lesbians. These L-words are currently camping out in Henry's hair. I WISH there were lesbians in Henry's hair. That would be so much more fun! I bet they'd keep the place really tidy, too.
I'm sure you've figured out by now that I'm talking about lice. You're smart that way.
Henry returned from sleepaway camp happy, worn out, filthy, and itchy. He mentioned that he had asked a counselor about his itchy head, and the counselor had looked at his head and saw the myriad bug bites and naturally assumed that the bites were troubling him. (Kid is festooned with bites. He is more bite than child. Their cabins were outdoors, and obviously he never used the bug repellent we packed for him. Also? It took him a week to find his shirts. His SHIRTS. He wore the same shirt for seven days. Fortunately he found the shirt-stash we had cleverly hidden in his footlocker before the Big Dance. I am glad he did not attend the Big Dance in the same filthy shirt he had been wearing all week. Actually I bet no one would have noticed, because kids are kinda dumb that way. Sorry, kids.) So the lice went unnoticed. Until he got home.
He was complaining and scritch-scratching like mad at his head, so I took a look, as parents will do when their kids are clawing at their scalps. I fervently hope that you guys never have to see the horrors that I saw there. I will be forever haunted by that sight. I'm going to go ahead and guess that he picked up the lice on his very first day there. They had clearly reproduced, and colonized, and erected statues, and then fought a few wars, and buried their dead, and then their children's children's children were told tales of the wondrous planet on which they were so lucky to live, where none of their ancestors had ever suffered from the mysterious Lotions and Combs that had, the stories claimed, felled so many of their kind in centuries hence. Because his scalp was moving. MOVING.
I may never sleep again.
We have coated his scalp in many salves and chemicals, we have been combing and picking nits off of him every single day and will continue to do so until we are satisfied it's all gone/he's in college; we washed and re-washed everything he brought home from camp in the hottest water that wouldn't actually disintegrated the fibers; we've vacuumed and sealed things in plastic and prayed to all of our gods. We even invented some! You can't have enough gods if you want to defeat lice.
I wanted to call one of the famed Lice Ladies of Brooklyn, but Scott thinks that's unnecessary. HAHAHAHAAA he has no idea. Well, he'll learn. Oh, he'll learn.(Or maybe he's right. Maybe.) (We all know I'm right, right? Of course.)
I spent an hour yesterday combing through my own conditioner-coated hair, and although I found nothing, I have to tell you, my scalp is itching like crazy. This is probably not surprising. I should add that my scalp has pretty much been itching ever since lice was rampant in his kindergarten class, two years ago. So it COULD be psychosomatic. Either that or the lice are extremely tricky. And I have been their unwitting host for lo these many years.
No need to give me any advice, as I have read/followed every bit of advice I could find on the Internet and beyond. I just wanted you to share in my horror. There. Now you have it, too. (The horror! Not the lice. I HOPE.)
Reader Comments (75)
Um Alice, when I see you at BlogHer? I'm going to hug you... not so tightly that our heads touch, OK? Thanks so much for sharing... I have visions of crawling things dancing in my head now - Yikes!
I got lice from trying on a hat at my brother's preschool. I was six with long curly hair, and having to bend over a tub for hours while my mother and grandmother picked nits out of my hair left enough of an impression on me that to this day I won't try on hats at stores. (I never did get them again, because when my mom read me the riot act over not sharing combs, hats ETC I *listened*!)
Ugh, good luck!
I used to get lice when I was little. I tell you. It is terrible, and I used to feel so guilty when my Mom got mad at me. Filthy bugs.
When my daughter got lice (years ago) her hair was down to the middle of her back, very thick, and blonde, which made it very hard to see the eggs. And does the lice shampoo actually work now? Because back then it didn't really kill them very well at all and I had to learn the hard way that the only way to really get rid of lice completely is to make your kid sit under a very bright light and pick out every. single. egg. And then do it all a week later because you always miss at least one.
I'm not surprised the nurse at Henry's camp missed them. My son had his head checked a couple of times at school and they completely missed the fact that he had TONS of them. He was asleep on the couch one day right after they had checked and for some random reason I decided to take a swipe through his hair with a lice comb - and just about threw up after looking at how many were on that comb. Let's just say it's a good thing I love that kid.
ACK!
I should've clicked out when I read LICE.
Now I'm all itchy.
Why oh WHY didn't I just leave????
Alice? I have to say this, I have to:
Be sure and buy the upholstery spray they sell in drug stores, Rid X, to spray on the headrests in your car.
That is all.
xo
Oh no Alice!!
I empathize totally. I managed to go K-12 never having gotten lice, despite having super duper long hair throughout most of the time. I was ever vigilant at not using other's combs.
Then 2 months after my June graduation , while working at a children's library I caught it. It was a living nightmare. I have very thick, wavy hair that went down nearly to my tukus. It took 3 boxes of Nix and one of Rid and the furniture spray from Rid to get rid of them. I went in October of that year to get a trim - and I couldn't the lice weren't totally gone (although I was not itching). That is when we got the Rid and when I went in December I was finally lice free. I told the stylist what I had been through and he checked and started cutting. I asked him if it was really all gone, and the moment he said yes, I cried.
My little brother had lice when he was a kid (as we all probably did) and he gave it to my mom. Unfortunately, the first she heard of it was when she went to get her hair cut and the hairdresser lady said, "I can't cut your hair. You have lice." My mom is still traumatized and I'm not sure that she's yet forgiven my brother -- even though he was only 3 years old or something.
We had a similar experience recently when we discovered that our cat was infested with fleas. It was BAD, skin was moving just as you described. At first we were foolish and tried using "natural" remedies, then finally said "to hell with it, BRING ON THE POISON. I shudder to think of dealing with lice one day....=(
i'm itching just thinking about it.
PLEASE get the Lice Ladies in. I am fascinated by them. And I find them ironic, too, because aren't they Hassidic and therefore have to wear sheitels? By the way, I can never use the word sheitel enough. SHEITEL.
Been there, done that. I say, it's summer, he's a boy, a buzz cut would be cute!
Actually, my son always preferred a buzz in the summer, it was cooler and his hair didn't bother him when he went swimming. (I started to type that his hair didn't bug him when he went swimming, then I thought, um, wait, not the best word here.)
Hmmmm...where was the camp nurse during this infestation? Making more nasty, judgmental phone calls to parents?
Ugh, I feel your pain. (And your itchiness, too, now!) In what we now refer to as The Great Lice Incident of Ought-Six, BOTH of my daughters had lice. I had the psychosomatic itchy scalp, combing the nasty little buggers - and their children, and their children's children - out of the girls' hair for weeks on end. And then it wasn't psychosomatic anymore, and I cried as my sweet husband combed them out of MY hair.
We chunked all of their dolls, stuffed animals, and hair accessories into plastic storage tubs, and then ended up throwing most of it away (the hair stuff, especially) when I finally gathered the courage to open up the tubs months later.
Ok. The boy is starting kindergarten in 3 weeks. I am FREAKING OUT NOW. Thanks for sharing your horror....
I didn't even realize I was scratching my head until the end of your post. So itchy now!
As a kid living and playing in the woods of Pennsylvania I had lice...twice. Oh how I pity my mother, as the first time she noticed the buggers was the moment her in-laws were walking in the door after driving all the way from Indiana to visit their darling and lice-free grandchildren. Surprise! BUGS! I wish you delousing success, post-haste!
When Henry writes his "what I did this summer" story back at school, make sure he mentions making the whole internet psychosomatically itchy. That's quite an achievement.
Good luck with your battle!
I now have a case of the heebie jeebies, as I like to call unknown itches caused by nothing. I completely sympathize with your situation. While I have never had lice, I have battled both bed bugs and fleas (bed bugs in NYC in 2005 and fleas in SF in 2010). I am highly allergic to both of those little monsters so I spent months with huge welts, unable to break the itch-scratch routine. With the NYC bed bugs I got so desperate to stop itching that I paid a "guru of dermatology" $500 cash to look at the bites, and give me oral steroids (he didn't take any insurance, and had no credit card machine at the office). The guru was kind enough to tell me that my inability to stop scratching had nothing to do with "being an adult" because my allergies were so severe that no one would be able to not scratch the welts I had (baseball sized hard white spots on my arms and legs, and my poor bitten toes were swollen like sausages). Thankfully with the bed bugs we moved, and they didn't follow us due to a new mattress and the miracles of cheap drop-off laundry service where they use nothing but hot water. For the fleas, our cat quickly became an indoor animal (she had lived in NYC for too long to really understand her week of freedom, so it wasn't that cruel), and a thorough round of vacuuming and borax did the trick. I hope there isn't a next time with either of them, but if there were to be a next time with fleas, I would go for the "flea buster" powder instead of borax since it's less toxic.
Best of luck in the battle!
We too are battling lice this summer. My daughter and I both had them. (I'd been wondering why my head was itching and I had itchy bumps on my neck... for weeks.) Man, does it suck. Biggest thing I've learned from this ordeal is that the internet is basically a tower of babel with scads of conflicting advice, and lots of people who are giving advice based on some kind of money-making scheme. Almost lost my mind reading all that crap. If I had it to do over, I would skip the chemicals--as they were a total failure for us.
Yuck! We just got rid of fleas (I pray pray pray we are rid of them!) Luckily they were only on us occasionally. The dogs were not so lucky. But I imagine the desperation, ick!-factor, and just not knowing how you might possibly get rid of the itchy little mfers, are similar. Good luck!
And THIS is why MY son never went to away camp. That and the fact that he never wanted to.
I echo the sentiment that the camp should have been looking before the campers were allowed to enter. Any camp my children have attended have followed this rule. Of course, if they didn't see them when he complained of being itchy, they may not have caught it at the beginning of the camp.
We have had our battles here with the little effers. My daughter spent an ENTIRE school year getting reinfested with them. She has given them to me twice. The eggs do not comb out of her hair and I had to literally pull each one out with my nails for hours and hours and hours on end. I just buzz-cut my son's head and could pull them all out easily in the bathtub and drown them.
Tea tree oil is our friend around here to keep them away.
Ok - now I am dying - dying! - of curiosity. Lice Ladies?!?!? Please to explain.
My head itches every time someone mentions lice, but the weird thing about that is that when I actually HAD lice, at age 16 (mortifying!), there wasn't any noticeable itching. Well, until my mom made me apply the chemical lice killer for the third time and I got chemical burn on my scalp. Then there was itching with a bonus of giant flakes of dandruff.
So sorry that Henry had lice. That is absolutely no fun.
Galileo's poor mother: eppur si muove.