Yeah, those little critters called lice made their way into my life again. Aaaaargh! I had thought, since my children are practically all adults (except one), that I was through with them ages ago, but then came GRANDCHILDREN!
My granddaughter, who is all but three years old, somehow contracted some of these monsters and they spread to numerous proportions. My daughter tried everything… but stubbornness prevailed, and they refused to leave their abode on my granddaughter’s head. But then disaster struck… my daughter got them, making her lose hope of ever getting rid of them. There was no way, she said, that she could get them out of her own hair, so she ignored them, hoping somehow they would pack up and take shelter some place else. Yet time went by, and she tried to hide the fact that both her and her daughter had them, but we all know lice… they spread and spread and spread.
Well, it so happened that my daughter and her kids had to come stay with me for awhile. But they were not coming alone… the lice would be VERY unwanted visitors. Now, anyone that knows me is well aware that I cannot stand any kind of bug, and those that feast off humans is the worst kind. When my kids were younger, I had to deal with lice a few times, as most parents do; but it wasn’t a pretty sight, and it caused every kind of anxiety imaginable and I became overwhelmed. Lice had become the centre of my life during that time as everything revolved around it- lice shampoo treatments, combing nits out of the hair each day for many days, washing clothes and bedding and then rewashing them, and spraying all the furniture… it went on and on, and I was not looking forward to that again… but here it was.
So, I took my daughter and granddaughter out to get a haircut… that was a lot of fun, and both got styles they never had before as they had to cut their hair SHORT. My daughter complained somewhat, but I told her it was for a good cause; and my granddaughter… she was ecstatic with her buzz cut… yes, buzz cut. I guess she was sick and tired of the long hair. We went straight to the pharmacy to get the lice killer, and the pharmacist placed four different kinds down in front of me. I was familiar with all of them except for one, which was an oil that was to be sprayed on, and left on the head over night and THEN washed out. It was the newest (and most expensive), lice treatment the pharmacist had to offer.
We went home, and I had to prepare myself mentally to deal with the little critters, but that didn’t stop my stomach from turning and my skin from crawling. I was tired and wanted it over with. Well, anyone who has dealt with a three year old knows how hard it is to keep them still, but I did the best I could and the treatment was going on. Oh wait… I began to see lice crawling down her neck and down her forehead hoping to get away from the oil that was made to smother them. Eww… I felt like jumping from my home in Toronto to somewhere in Scotland, where my grandmother was born. But… I had to deal with it, and I collected the lice in a tissue as they tried to escape to safety. It took about two hours to soak my granddaughter’s scalp and comb through the hair to get the dead lice and nits out. My legs were sore and so was my wrist… but I still had my daughter’s hair to do. That was a little harder, as my daughter has a lot more hair to soak and much more places for the critters to take refuge, but after another couple of hours we were done… yes, DONE!
Over the next few days I had to be diligent in checking their hair in case one had successfully escaped my murderous rampage… but to my surprise, there was none to be found and for the past two weeks… I have not seen a louse or heard from a louse. Phew! The deed was done, and my daughter and granddaughter can now rest safely without their scalps being bitten to an indistinguishable bumpy mess. They are happy… I am happy, and for the rest of my life I hope to never again have an encounter with anything that resembles the crawling scalp eater.