Aarrggg! Lice!!

[dirty ethel rackham]

How is it that, for my first 55 years on this planet, I never encountered head lice?  And now that I have grown children, we are dealing with it twice in one year!  Last November, K came down with head lice and I tried to treat it myself - with the chemical treatment and daily nit-combing for 2 weeks and they just wouldn't go away.  The stress of it all sent K out of control and led to a blow up with dh, which led to his heart attack.    I eventually sent her to one of those one-and-done lice treatment places.  It was expensive, but worth it.

Well just tonight, dd19 found lice as she was combing through her very thick, curly hair in the shower.  This was after we had just washed her bedding.  She has an appointment tomorrow at the same lice treatment place and we have to clean cars, couches, laundry, etc.  

I know that, in the grand scheme of things, it isn't a tragedy.  But I'm really not in the mood for this!  

[TravelingChris]

I have never dealt with it,  BUt yeah, that is awful,  I am so sorry, Ellen.

[Farrar]

I would be wary that you didn't get rid of them in the first place. Could they be in your house?

And... I'm really sorry you're dealing with them. I had them as a kid and (knock on wood), I'm so grateful that we've managed to miraculously (because lots of kids we know have had them) dodged them.

Edited June 17, 2019 by Farrar

[Storygirl]

Ick!! We had a case of lice about two years ago. We did use one of the professional treatment places, because I just couldn't deal with the hair myself. We were busy enough washing all of the bedding, clothing, etc. So sorry you are going through it again!

[Terabith]

I’m so sorry.  I legit have ptsd type reactions to lice after we had them a bunch of times. (I have ptsd from other stuff.  But lice really is legitimately triggering.)  Professional lice comber is definitely the way to go.  Prescription shampoo is number two.  I would never try to deal with it all myself again.  

Edited June 17, 2019 by Terabith

[Scarlett]

1 hour ago, dirty ethel rackham said:

How is it that, for my first 55 years on this planet, I never encountered head lice?  And now that I have grown children, we are dealing with it twice in one year!  Last November, K came down with head lice and I tried to treat it myself - with the chemical treatment and daily nit-combing for 2 weeks and they just wouldn't go away.  The stress of it all sent K out of control and led to a blow up with dh, which led to his heart attack.    I eventually sent her to one of those one-and-done lice treatment places.  It was expensive, but worth it.

Well just tonight, dd19 found lice as she was combing through her very thick, curly hair in the shower.  This was after we had just washed her bedding.  She has an appointment tomorrow at the same lice treatment place and we have to clean cars, couches, laundry, etc.  

I know that, in the grand scheme of things, it isn't a tragedy.  But I'm really not in the mood for this!  

My first and only experience with it as when my son was 12 and I was 47!  I was so traumatized by it.  So I feel your pain.

Where in the world is K picking it up?

[dirty ethel rackham]

3 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

My first and only experience with it as when my son was 12 and I was 47!  I was so traumatized by it.  So I feel your pain.

Where in the world is K picking it up?

K  picked it up last November ... probably from the friends she hung out with.  Dd19 is a different kid.  She may have picked it up from college or some other friend.  Her friends all hug each other.  One of her friends does a ton of babysitting.

[Scarlett]

6 minutes ago, dirty ethel rackham said:

K  picked it up last November ... probably from the friends she hung out with.  Dd19 is a different kid.  She may have picked it up from college or some other friend.  Her friends all hug each other.  One of her friends does a ton of babysitting.

Oh I see!  Wow, I would want to know the source so I could avoid!,

[Garga]

Not lice, but back in 2011 or 2010 my dh brought bedbugs home from a hotel. It was horrific. They were crawling on us when we slept for months and it wasn’t until I found one on my pillow one night that we knew what was going on.  It was very expensive to treat (over $1000) and we had to toss a bunch of stuff when we decluttered a bunch of places where they might have been hiding. We also had to stay in our bed even though we knew the bugs were there in the couple of days before the bug guy got to our house.  He said if we moved, that the bugs would follow us throughout the house and we’d have to treat more of the house, which would add hundreds more to the bill and make it very, very hard to treat successfully.  So, we laid there all night for two nights knowing they were crawling all over us and biting.

Ever since then, I’ve been super strict about not unpacking in hotels and in living out of black trash bags when we travel so we can bag up everything tightly, so the bugs can’t get into our stuff.  We change out of our clothes every time we enter the hotel room so the bugs won’t come home in our clothes....oh I could go on and on about all the hoops I jump through to make sure we don’t bring them home.  It’s a huge hassle.  You want chapstick?  It’s in your purse?  Un-twistie tie the trash bag with your purse, get the chapstick, use it, put it all back in the bag and twistie tie it up. Oh, now you need your comb?  Same story.  Your meds?  Same story.  Your toothbrush?  Same story.  URGH.

And then, just this past October, I was desperate for a mini-vacation so we went to the beach for 2 nights and 3 days.  And for the first time in 7 or 8 years, I was so sick of living out of plastic bags that I said, “Forget it guys.  Just unpack everything.  What’re the odds there’ll be bugs here?”  The first morning there, I woke up to a bedbug stuck in my pillowcase and evidence they’d been biting us all night long. (I could see the bug through the white of the pillowcase as it crawled around trying to get out.  Oh so creepy!)  At least this time around, I knew how not to bring them home with us, though it did mean we had to sacrifice a half day of our vacation to wiping down every possession we had in the room and bagging it all up.  

I am now highly reluctant to travel ever again.  😞

I so,so, so feel your pain.  That sinking and frustrated and “it’s not FAIR” feeling.  Get her to the expensive place and don’t even bother doing anything else.  

 

Edited June 17, 2019 by Garga

[CTVKath]

I'm so sorry. I'm 50 and experienced lice for the first time in my life earlier this year. My 9yo daughter got them and I took her to a lice treatment place. They insisted the rest of the family be checked and found that my 7yo son had them as well as I had them. It was a terrible hassle and stressful mentally. I hope none of you gets them again.

[Scarlett]

8 hours ago, Garga said:

Not lice, but back in 2011 or 2010 my dh brought bedbugs home from a hotel. It was horrific. They were crawling on us when we slept for months and it wasn’t until I found one on my pillow one night that we knew what was going on.  It was very expensive to treat (over $1000) and we had to toss a bunch of stuff when we decluttered a bunch of places where they might have been hiding. We also had to stay in our bed even though we knew the bugs were there in the couple of days before the bug guy got to our house.  He said if we moved, that the bugs would follow us throughout the house and we’d have to treat more of the house, which would add hundreds more to the bill and make it very, very hard to treat successfully.  So, we laid there all night for two nights knowing they were crawling all over us and biting.

Ever since then, I’ve been super strict about not unpacking in hotels and in living out of black trash bags when we travel so we can bag up everything tightly, so the bugs can’t get into our stuff.  We change out of our clothes every time we enter the hotel room so the bugs won’t come home in our clothes....oh I could go on and on about all the hoops I jump through to make sure we don’t bring them home.  It’s a huge hassle.  You want chapstick?  It’s in your purse?  Un-twistie tie the trash bag with your purse, get the chapstick, use it, put it all back in the bag and twistie tie it up. Oh, now you need your comb?  Same story.  Your meds?  Same story.  Your toothbrush?  Same story.  URGH.

And then, just this past October, I was desperate for a mini-vacation so we went to the beach for 2 nights and 3 days.  And for the first time in 7 or 8 years, I was so sick of living out of plastic bags that I said, “Forget it guys.  Just unpack everything.  What’re the odds there’ll be bugs here?”  The first morning there, I woke up to a bedbug stuck in my pillowcase and evidence they’d been biting us all night long. (I could see the bug through the white of the pillowcase as it crawled around trying to get out.  Oh so creepy!)  At least this time around, I knew how not to bring them home with us, though it did mean we had to sacrifice a half day of our vacation to wiping down every possession we had in the room and bagging it all up.  

I am now highly reluctant to travel ever again.  😞

I so,so, so feel your pain.  That sinking and frustrated and “it’s not FAIR” feeling.  Get her to the expensive place and don’t even bother doing anything else.  

 

I think there are ways to inspect the room before you unpack......

[catz]

1 hour ago, CTVKath said:

I'm so sorry. I'm 50 and experienced lice for the first time in my life earlier this year. My 9yo daughter got them and I took her to a lice treatment place. They insisted the rest of the family be checked and found that my 7yo son had them as well as I had them. It was a terrible hassle and stressful mentally. I hope none of you gets them again.

Yes nit comb everyone In the house for sure.   Or have them do a once over at the professional place.  But don’t assume no one else has them.   It can take a long time from exposure to having an outbreak that is fairly easy to discover.  

[dirty ethel rackham]

11 hours ago, Farrar said:

I would be wary that you didn't get rid of them in the first place. Could they be in your house?

And... I'm really sorry you're dealing with them. I had them as a kid and (knock on wood), I'm so grateful that we've managed to miraculously (because lots of kids we know have had them) dodged them.

But 7 months?  And dd was away at college for 3 months before K was infested and K left our house over 2 months prior to dd coming home from college. And we cleaned EVERYTHING ... multiple times.  And dh and I never got them ... I was checked by the lice treatment place and dh ... well, he doesn't have as much hair as he used to so I did the checking myself every day for a month.  And K was super paranoid about getting them again.  

So, the source could be that dd got them from someone at college, or one of her friends has them and doesn't know it ... they are all "let's hug, heads together, let's take a selfie." Or, K has them again and dd got them when visiting K ... just from a hug.  But, I don't think K is infested again ... we would have heard about it since it would be very triggering for her and she would have devolved pretty seriously.

Anyway, dd has an appointment with the treatment place this afternoon and she will tell us everything we need to do.  I am already stripping all the beds and vacuuming all the furniture.  But I will have to throw away the filters for my vacuum since it is bagless.  Good thing I bought the big package of filters.   

ETA:  and the only one of us working with children is me through my volunteer job a couple hours a week and I rarely get close to their heads.  I'm pretty sure I don't have them.  

Edited June 17, 2019 by dirty ethel rackham

[Tanaqui]

Lice aren't like fleas. They don't hop on and off, they live on humans. They definitely, positively, 100% have not been hiding in your house for the past seven months - they can't even make it seven days away from our heads, and their eggs need to be extremely close to a human scalp in order to incubate. (That's why buzzcuts work so well for getting rid of lice - no hair, no place for the lice to lay their eggs, no second generation.)

You don't really need to do all that house cleaning. You can if it makes you feel better, but lice don't live in your house. They live on your head. They don't lurk on the furniture waiting to attack.

[dirty ethel rackham]

1 minute ago, Tanaqui said:

Lice aren't like fleas. They don't hop on and off, they live on humans. They definitely, positively, 100% have not been hiding in your house for the past seven months - they can't even make it seven days away from our heads, and their eggs need to be extremely close to a human scalp in order to incubate. (That's why buzzcuts work so well for getting rid of lice - no hair, no place for the lice to lay their eggs, no second generation.)

You don't really need to do all that house cleaning. You can if it makes you feel better, but lice don't live in your house. They live on your head. They don't lurk on the furniture waiting to attack.

Yeah, it will make me feel better.  But, everything I've read is that, any surface that has had contact with the infected person's head needs to be cleaned ... so that means couches since she often lays on the couch.  Yeah, the eggs don't hatch there, but if there is any chance that the eggs could get transferred to another person's head, then we should clean it.

(BTDT with fleas ... we had an early spring one year and didn't get our dog his flea and tick meds in time.  That was not fun at all.)  

[Tanaqui]

The eggs cannot get transferred to another person's head. They are glued onto the hair, right next to the scalp so they stay at the optimum temperature. It is impossible for eggs to be moved from one head to another. There is zero chance of this happening.

[Farrar]

I’ve known of families who had long term low level infestations in between bouts. So that’s why I suggested it. But if you’re sure none of you had them in the interim, then, yeah, likely bad luck. 🙁

[dirty ethel rackham]

42 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

The eggs cannot get transferred to another person's head. They are glued onto the hair, right next to the scalp so they stay at the optimum temperature. It is impossible for eggs to be moved from one head to another. There is zero chance of this happening.

Then why do they say not to share combs or hats and to thoroughly wash bedding and towels in hot water and dry on high heat?  

[catz]

55 minutes ago, dirty ethel rackham said:

Then why do they say not to share combs or hats and to thoroughly wash bedding and towels in hot water and dry on high heat?  

Because live adults can be transferred though they only live a short time off the head.  You only really need to do a once over when there is an active adult infestation so you don't get reinfected.  

[catz]

With the one and done places, I'd probably still do some follow up quick comb throughs the following couple weeks through an egg cycle and be doing some basic comb through on everyone in the house's head even if you aren't seeing anything.  You only need to miss 2 breeding adults to end up with a disaster area in 8 weeks or more depending on hair type and they're hard to detect individually unless you have a pretty bad infestation.  

We've had it twice.  Our incidents were several years apart so not a reinfestation.  At some points, I was doing a comb through after every sleepover.  This page is a nice overview of life cycle and how a combing program works.  We focused on the the first week and then the VIP days and was able to get rid of them. We used chemicals the first time and that seemed useless so we didn't' used them and just did combing with conditioner the 2nd time. 

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/theliceprogram/

[Garga]

3 hours ago, Scarlett said:

I think there are ways to inspect the room before you unpack......

Yes, we should have looked harder.  When we looked harder, we saw the little black dots on the underside of the sheets.  I could have kicked myself.  I just got sloppy.  😞

[gingersmom]

I paid $$$ to a lice place only for them to come back. Personally I don’t think they ever left!!

Google using Cetaphil soap, Dump a bottle on your hair, comb through, leave on overnight, rinse, pick out dead nits, repeat in a couple of days.

I did no extra washing, vacuuming, etc and they were gone forever.

Edited June 17, 2019 by gingersmom

[Tanaqui]

7 hours ago, dirty ethel rackham said:

Then why do they say not to share combs or hats and to thoroughly wash bedding and towels in hot water and dry on high heat?  

 

Because one pregnant louse can walk over from your friend's hat or comb and have lots and lots of babies.

Also because people feel that they need to DO SOMETHING, and they rest better if they've washed everything. Bagging up the bedding for a couple of days will work as well - they really can't survive more than a few days off the head.

Finally, this is the same routine you need to follow if you have bedbugs and it's useful if you have fleas (though not necessary for a low-level infestation if your pets can be treated with advantage or frontline) so it's easy to extrapolate from there that lice are the same. I mean, people say lots of things.

It's not going to do any harm, anyway, but the two extreme measures that actually work are a. shaving everybody or b. going through everybody's hair daily with a fine tooth comb, section by section, until it's been two weeks with no signs of lice or nits.

[Tanaqui]

Although on a less extreme note, you can amplify the effectiveness of b by following up, section by section, with a close hair dryer on low heat for 30 seconds (per section, not per head - it can't be diffuse!) and by keeping the hair braided up during the day.

And if you want to cheat and you're finding that your lice are resistant to OTC medications... you can try benzyl alcohol, which is what we used on the kids and a friend when the two families kept passing the same case of lice back and forth. Get a whole ton of it and a new set of measuring spoons, get some cheap fragrance-free conditioner or lotion (trust me, cheap scent in these quantities is not worth it), mix one or two tablespoons of alcohol per cup of lotion/conditioner, apply in the usual way and let sit on the head 45 minutes before washing out. This is what prescription lice medicine is made of, lice haven't developed a resistance yet, and it's only $25 if you mock it up yourself rather than over $100 per dose if you buy it at the pharmacy. And it works. Reapply at one week intervals for a month or so, in case eggs hatch (two week incubation period for nits) or you get reinfested.

It'll eat through your measuring spoons, though, if they're plastic - that's why you get new ones for this.

[dirty ethel rackham]

Well, we just got back from the one-and-done lice treatment center ... she guarantees her work.  They think that this infestation is a month old.  Dd has long, super thick, super curly hair.  She just thought she had dandruff and an itchy scalp ... something she has battled for years.  So this means she got it at school, where it was going around.  Her BFF that she spends every non-working, non-studying minute with, thinks she found a nit.  And this poor girl doesn't have the funds to do our one-and-done treatment.  Arrggh.  

[YaelAldrich]

Stay away from the chemical treatments and use this instead.  LICE MD  This and the Assy 2000 lice comb are what people use in Israel and I promise you they have a LOT of experience with lice (the plagues never left!)  Follow the instructions religiously.