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Sudden scalp itch in 9yo

*Lulu*

By *Lulu*,
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*Lulu*

*Lulu*

Posted
Posted

So wise minds of the Hive:

 

What could cause this?

 

The last week it has been constant. I thought it was because she used a shampoo with a dye she is allergic to in it. But she has rehashed her hair with her normal shampoo over 5 times now.

 

I need ideas as to what could be causing this change.

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Cinder

Cinder

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I've had sudden itching that was not lice but I couldn't figure out what it was. I had let the girls at Awana play with my hair and the next day my scalp was itching like mad. I swore I had lice and was mad at myself for it. But I checked and checked day after day after day. No lice. My scalp still itched badly for about a week. I didn't think to go to the doc for it--there wasn't anything I could *see* that was different--but I never did figure it out.

 

I hope your dd doesn't have lice.

 

 

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redsquirrel

redsquirrel

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my 9 year old son had an itchy scalp. I checked for lice and saw nothing. He told me his head always itches and I should stop checking his head every time he scratched.

 

Then I came down with a mystery rash on the back of my neck. I had tried a new conditioner so I figured that was the problem. So we washed sheets and I used my old conditioner again and it was ok...then it flared up again. This happened several times. Then one day after washing my hair yet again I reached up and pulled a louse off my head.

 

We all had them. My 9 year old prob had 1,000 nits and hundreds of lice at different stages of growth.

 

But, with a little science and perseverance we got rid of them in 4 days. 2 weeks later and we are lice and nit free, thank goodness.

 

So... do you have a decent lice comb because I never saw a  nit or a louse on his head until I used the comb.

 

 

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eternalsummer

eternalsummer

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Yes, we had to try the comb before we realized we had lice, and it had been going on for months.  I thought it was allergies of some sort (DD is quite sensitive of skin), then that it was dryness, etc.  I had checked for lice in the beginning but I didn't really know how to check.

 

9 year old girls esp. I think are prone to getting lice because they are more likely to share brushes, combs, hair clips, headbands, bows, etc. with other girls.  We got it from a cousin.

 

It took a week of twice a day full on combs (1/2 hour or so each time), and then 2 more weeks of combing out newly hatched lice from eggs/nits that we had missed, but we've been lice free for 6 months.

 

I am still really really paranoid about it though - one small itch on the head and I do the whole thing with the lice comb.

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Joker

Joker

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I'm so sorry! We had it last year for the first time ever and my girls were 11 and 13! I found one of those businesses that does the hair dryer treatment (no chemicals!) and then combs out the hair. It took one time and we never had an issue again and I didn't have to comb their hair either. They even did a free re-check one month later and would have repeated the treatment for free if they were back. It might be something you could look into.

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eternalsummer

eternalsummer

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Buy this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000HIBPV8/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

It is the best lice comb I've found, and it doesn't hurt or strip the hair like some of them do.

 

Wet hair, comb through section by section twice a day for 2 weeks.  

 

I tried a lot of lice combs.

 

 

do you know people in ancient Egypt were buried/entombed/whatever with lice combs?  As like a valuable thing you might need in the afterlife, hah.

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serene

serene

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Headlice.org (National Pediculosis Association) says combing is more effective than chemical shampoos, or other treatments. Also, thorough vacuuming of furniture, rugs, stuffed animals and carseats is better than lice sprays. The comb they recommend is the LiceMeister; you can find it at drug stores (CVS, Walgreens, etc).   Much more information at their website.

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nd293

nd293

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Houston....we have a louse!

 

 

*screams in closet for 10 minutes- swigs straight from the wine bottle- starts disinfecting and delousing e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.*

Here the advised treatment is conditioner and combing daily for 10 days. I want to try something else, but sadly our lice situation was not really extreme enough to notice if a treatment was obviously successful, so I'll mention what I'm considering in case anyone else wants to give it a try.

 

The Cetaphil lice treatment uses Cetaphil sensitive face cleanser. It is put on the hair, dried on by hair dryer to 'shrink wrap' the critters and left on for 8 hours to suffocate them. It was developed by a doctor, but has not been formally tested as far as I know.

 

Hair drying is supposed to desiccate and kill the eggs. I think that it is 30 minutes on dry hair, but will obviously depend on how much hair the child has. We basically sectioned the hair and went repeatedly over each part.

 

I get so fed up with our education department for recommending the 10 day combing method. I am a stay at home mom, committed to the kids, and pretty organised, and I just can't get it done. It took 2.5 hours to do dd's long, curly hair the first day. We aim for every 2nd or 3rd day over the 10 day period. If I worked full time, was highly disorganised or not that bothered (and sadly we all know those parents exist) then the thought of doing 10 days of hair combing would just be a joke. So we are advised to use a method that is impractical, and is probably not getting done right in most cases (this family included), and so the problem perpetuates. Why not put more research into more user friendly methods such as those above, neither of which seem to have had significant research into them, although both are anecdotally said to work.

 

I might need a little wine myself... We've just gone through this, and the frustration is still fresh!

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eternalsummer

eternalsummer

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It was frustrating!

 

We tried the suffocating method, no luck.  We tried the lice killer stuff, the drying method (this is harder than just combing every day, because the head gets hot), no luck.

 

I think the people who you take the kid to and for $150 or $200 they get every single louse and nit out are supposed to be quite good; the mother of the cousin we got them from in the first place took cousin to one of those (she is a single working mom, so no time for 2 hours a day of combing) and it worked just fine.

 

 

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Joker

Joker

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It was frustrating!

 

We tried the suffocating method, no luck.  We tried the lice killer stuff, the drying method (this is harder than just combing every day, because the head gets hot), no luck.

 

I think the people who you take the kid to and for $150 or $200 they get every single louse and nit out are supposed to be quite good; the mother of the cousin we got them from in the first place took cousin to one of those (she is a single working mom, so no time for 2 hours a day of combing) and it worked just fine.

 

This is what we did. No one else picked up the lice and we didn't do anything else in the house other than wash bed linens and bag up some of youngest dd's stuffed animals. I did a quick comb through once a week for a few weeks just to make myself feel better but we weren't disrupted much at all. The place we went to checked all of our heads as well to be sure no one else had it. It was so worth the money!

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Reefgazer

Reefgazer

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My kids caught lice last summer; ugh.  It kept re-occurring and so we hired one of those nurses that guarantees to get lice out or they return to re-do the job free of charge (yes, she got rid of it).  She said the lice re-occur because nits were left in the hair.  The key is to get the nits out, not the medication used.  She showed me how she put a tea tree oil conditioner on the hair to create barriers between hair sections, separated the hair into sections, and pulled the nits out with her fingertips.  Like 2-3 hair strands at a time, no kiddin'.  She said nits more than a few inches from the scalp can be ignored; they won't hatch anyway.  She asked us to wash and dry bedding after she worked on our kids, but that was it because lice can't live more than a day or 2 off of a human scalp, so there was no need to bag stuff animals for weeks on end.

Headlice.org (National Pediculosis Association) says combing is more effective than chemical shampoos, or other treatments. Also, thorough vacuuming of furniture, rugs, stuffed animals and carseats is better than lice sprays. The comb they recommend is the LiceMeister; you can find it at drug stores (CVS, Walgreens, etc).   Much more information at their website.

 

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eternalsummer

eternalsummer

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The thing about the nits is that they're very hard to get rid of yourself, but lice can't reproduce until they're several days (2 weeks?  I don't remember exactly) old.  So if you keep combing every day for 2 weeks, as the nits hatch and turn into little bitty lice, you comb them out before they can lay more eggs, and eventually you've got it all.

 

We did kill a lot of the nits by blowdrying hair for 30 minutes, but I couldn't do it much because it made DD so hot.

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nd293

nd293

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Coconut oil with a few drops of tea tree oil. Keep hair oiled and comb twice daily.

 

But make sure it is warm, or the kids will yell when you try to comb through! It is winter here, and the coconut oil solidified on the hair. We sat in the sun, eventually, and that was better, but dd13 refused to let me use coconut oil again, as it was too hard to get out of her hair. The seem to be some research suggesting that it is effective.

 

I found conditioner most effective for combing out the actual lice, but for looking for nits (eggs) an oil was better, as they were more vsible. We used one of the natural products available for lice from the pharmacy, and that was oily enough, but not too oily (says the one who didn't have to wash it out of her hair, dd will disagree!)

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Cammie

Cammie

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Just so you ladies know, we use a product here in India (I probably don't want to know what is in it) that is SUPER effective.  You slather the stuff in the hair, go to sleep on a towel.  ALL the dead lice are on the towel in the morning.  We have used it with great effect a few times...the lice are gone and I think the nits are dead at that point as well because we don't get any reoccurrence.  Probably would never get FDA approval, however!

 

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Arcadia

Arcadia

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Just so you ladies know, we use a product here in India (I probably don't want to know what is in it) that is SUPER effective.

My mom would buy that anti-lice thing and olive oil from the mama (elder, Asian Indian) shop to use on our hair. After all the lice are gone, it was time to massage the olive oil onto the hair as hair conditioner. We would just do schoolwork as usual with our hair wrapped in a towel :lol:

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flyingiguana

flyingiguana

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Combing out nits is horrible. If they're well cemented, it just pulls the hair out.

 

Instead -- I combed until I ran into a nit. Then I snipped out that individual hair.

 

Truth is, if the nit is a long way from the scalp it's either dead or already hatched, so you really don't have to worry about those. You do want to be sure you deal with the ones close to the scalp. They're ready to hatch.

 

The combing is good for getting out the bugs. It may be the best thing you can do. But it takes hours and hours of combing. If you comb often, you'll eventually get to the point where there are only fresh nits left and those comb off the hair quite easily. The cement hasn't had time to harden yet.

 

You don't need to wash things. The water does nothing. Soap does nothing. Just run stuff in the dryer. It's heat that kills. I think it's something like 140 degrees F that works?

 

Be sure you tell everyone your kids have contact with. It's likely that the person they caught them from doesn't know. And it's likely your kids have passed it along. If you keep quiet, you'll just get another infestation.

 

Kerosene is supposed to be effective, but it's a very, very bad idea. I wonder about some home remedies for this reason. I'd want to be very sure they weren't flammable as well. (Mayonnaise might be a better idea than straight oil, for this reason)

 

I also wonder about the blow dryer method, as anything hot enough to kill the lice might also burn the scalp?

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redsquirrel

redsquirrel

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It takes one week for the eggs to hatch and then over a week before the nymph is mature enough to lay eggs.  All in all, a louse has a life span of about a month.

 

We just combed every day with spray conditioner and a good lice comb and they were gone in 4 days. I put the pillows, cases and all, in the dryer every day, everyone got their own towel and those got washed every day and every day we showered and then wet combed the hair. In 4 days I was finding zero nits or nymphs or anything. When we started my son easily had over a thousand nits in his hair and hundreds of hatched lice. It was disgusting. We all had it, but he was the worst. I didn't use anything more toxic than johnson's no more tangles spray. I didn't dry the hair after the first day.

 

Well, the first day, Everyone showered, then I combed with the spray conditioner removing as many nits and lice as possible. Then I used Cetaphil and used a regular comb and then the lice comb to comb it out and we dried the hair with a dryer. So technically that first day everyone got two shots of the lice comb. The second day we washed out the Cetaphil and I used the spray conditioner and used the lice comb. I found maybe 10 nits on my son and no live lice or nymphs. I used the lice comb and spray conditioner for four days. Then we took a couple days off because I had found zero nits on that fourth day. Then five days later I combed again and found zero nits or lice. So, I consider us lice free.

 

Even though all four of us had it and three of the four of us have long hair, two well past shoulders and very thick, we were in the clear very quickly. It actually wasn't that big a deal. It was the good comb that made all the difference. I saw that combing gets out about 80% of nits, so I just combed every day and depended on math, lol.

 

I used the Terminator Nit comb because a store in town sells them. I used a whole lot of paper towels because I used them to wipe off the comb in between to check for any nits. When I was done combing I poured boiling water over any hair clips or hair ties and combs etc that I needed to to deal with all the hair.

 

A friend and her daughter would put olive oil on their hair and the put a swim cap on top (they already owned tight fitting swim caps) then in the morning they would wash it out and then use the nit comb. Her lice were also gone very quickly. Plus, they didn't have to put the pillows in the drier every day etc. 

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redsquirrel

redsquirrel

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Combing out nits is horrible. If they're well cemented, it just pulls the hair out.

 

Instead -- I combed until I ran into a nit. Then I snipped out that individual hair.

 

Truth is, if the nit is a long way from the scalp it's either dead or already hatched, so you really don't have to worry about them. You want to be sure you deal with the ones close to the scalp.

 

You don't need to wash things. The water does nothing. Soap does nothing. Just run stuff in the dryer. It's heat that kills. I think it's something like 140 degrees F that works?

 

Be sure you tell everyone your kids have contact with. It's likely that the person they caught them from doesn't know. And it's likely your kids have passed it along. If you keep quiet, you'll just get another infestation.

 

Kerosene is supposed to be effective, but it's a very, very bad idea. I wonder about some home remedies. I'd want to be very sure they weren't flammable.

 

I remember that being true when I had lice 15 years ago (the months leading up to my wedding. Such a treasured memory) We had one heck of a time getting rid of the lice because we could NOT get a lice comb through our hair without just ripping it out. To be honest, I have no idea how we finally beat the lice. They just seemed to go away.

 

But we had them again this past month (now with kids, lol) and we had a very positive experience using a well made lice comb. We used The Terminator Nit Free Comb, but there is one just like it called LiceMeister that I am sure works just as well. My older son has short wavy and fine hair, my younger son has super thick, long and fine hair, my dh has almost kinky and fragile hair and I have very long and curly hair. None of us had any problem with hair being pulled out this time. I was worried it would damage my hair but it didn't. It was very effective and it didn't hurt or pull hair out. I was very surprised. I was seriously contemplating a buzz cut for the summer.

 

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*Lulu*

*Lulu*

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Thank y'all so much for all the advice and encouragement from the trenches!

 

I spent all day combing hair, washing and/or bagging bedding and stuffed animals, and trying to pacify my youngest child who has sensory issues and, as I discovered today, lice. That is a fun combo right there.

 

So....if anything scandalous or hilarious goes down....pm me. I'll be off combing hair for the next 72 hours.

 

*deep sigh*

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PollyOR

PollyOR

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I can attest that a louse can live more than 24 hours.  I found it while I was washing my hair and put it in a sandwich bag.  It did indeed live 48 hours.

 

I did the lice program that was linked above. http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/theliceprogram/ 

 

I didn't vacuum and bag things.  What we did do: changed pillow cases daily, used towels once and then they were washed and dried on the highest setting, combed everyone's hair using the lice program schedule.  

 

I was the only one we found live lice on.  Three out of five family members had nits.  We never saw another live louse during the combing schedule.

 

The con to the program is the time involved.  School, work, and evening schedules made it difficult some days to get everyone combed on the same day.

 

Pro?  Not combing every day and... IT WORKED!

 

Good luck!  I know how tiring this can be.

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