Creepy crawlies

OK, so we are now part of the elite society of People Who Have Head Lice. We got an email from our school saying that a kid had lice and to check your kid’s head. I did, with the help of another school mom, and found the nits (eggs). They actually weren’t white–they were blackish-brown and very tiny. So, we did the whole rigmarole: washed and combed her and our hair, washed all the bedding, vacuumed everything, put her stuffed animals in garbage bags (5 of them), and did endless loads of laundry.

We had a somewhat embarrassing experience when looking for a non-toxic lice treatment. First we went to a natural food chain store. After looking in their hair and kid aisle I was forced to go to the info desk, which was crowded with people, and explain that I needed a lice treatment. They didn’t have that particular LICE treatment but the vitamin supplement store probably had the LICE treatment I needed. Then I went to a vitamin supplement store and asked. No, they didn’t have it but their other store had the Head LICE Treatment 2 with the LICE comb. Do you need the LICE comb in addition to the LICE hair treatment? Or just the LICE treatment number 1, which doesn’t seem to have the LICE comb? Oh, I guess you need it right away, huh, because you have LICE right now, right? After looking at the computer and talking to their other store about the LICE treatment options, he determined that the other store had the LICE treatment and the LICE comb we needed. During this exchange, a huge line formed in back of us. I could just feel everyone stepping back a few steps at each mention of LICE.

After doing a ton of LICE management, around 1 am we decided we had done everything we could and went to bed. Now we just need to check our daughter’s and our hair every day and use the special comb to make sure we’ve gotten them all.

In case anyone else needs the info, there’s a great website out there that has good pictures of what lice and their nits look like on the hair (as opposed the the endless sites that have pictures of magnified lice–which aren’t helpful because I couldn’t get my daughter’s head squished onto a slide to look at under the microscope). The site is Headlice.Org, the site of the National Pediculosis Association. It has all sorts of info, including the page called When is a Nit Not a Nit which has the helpful pictures. It’s a site devoted to non-pesticide treatments of Head lice. It also has some common sense stuff about how this is pretty normal and not to be too embarrassed. They didn’t, however, talk about how to deal with the word LICE when going to stores to get the stuff for LICE.