I have debated for days whether or not to share my horrifying experience with you all; but I quickly decided that I must. Some may be shocked, others disgusted, some sympathetic, I do not know how you will feel; I just know that my house was thrown into a tailspin last week and I have managed to make it through to the other side. Let me share with you what happened.
It all started about three weeks ago, my sweet girl began complaining of her head itching (some of you already know where this is going), I chalked it up to massive amounts of chlorine and saltwater exposure this summer and began giving her extra conditioner in the shower, I didn’t think another thing of it. I noticed she kept scratching and after giving her head a quick check and seeing nothing out of the ordinary we went on our merry way. A few days later, my head began to itch with a ferocity I cannot explain. I scratched and scratched until I thought I would go mad. I had my darling husband look at my scalp with a flash light and he saw nothing.
My children went to visit their grandmother for the weekend, and I went shopping for some scalp relief. I found a conditioner with tea tree oil (a natural scalp soother) and purchased it to try. After using it a few days it seemed to work, less itch. The children came home and I tried the new conditioner on my sweet girl’s head. I decided she needed a hair-cut and set her up in the kitchen on my “haircut” stool and as soon as I pulled the comb through her long curly hair, I shrieked with terror, lice! Lice were covering the comb, live parasitic lice crawling all over my poor darling’s head. I immediately dispatched my husband to the drugstore to buy RID as I talked myself off of the ledge. I knew that I obviously had them and went to check the boy’s head.
Right away I saw that my son had them too, though not quite as bad. As I treated everyone’s head with the RID shampoo, my husband was stripping beds, couch cushions and shoving everything that he could into the washing machine. I was trying to remain calm on the outside while inside I was screaming, “there are bugs on our heads” I was barely able to control myself from lighting my hair on fire and running around outside, seriously. My sweet girl was so worried that the lice were going to “eat her hair” and that she had “done something wrong.” I had to put her mind at ease.
Lice love clean, long, shiny hair. You don’t have to doanything to get lice except have hair, and they will not “eat” your hair, they just feed off of your scalp-gross I know. Lice do not discriminate, if you have hair and sit on a couch, or put on a hat, or use a brush or swim in a pool (I know!) that has live lice on it or in it, you will get lice. You can be wealthy, poor, and middle class, you can be a girl, a boy, a grandma, a grandpa, a mama or a daddy. It doesn’t matter. Lice does not spread disease, it’s super itchy and very, very annoying.
After treating with RID and combing the children’s hair for hours (I’m not exaggerating) for two days, making them walk around the house in shower caps, putting sheets over freshly laundered and vacuumed furniture and praying endlessly, my girl still had lice. I was at my wit’s end. Friends gave advice, I tried everything on the internet, but the saving grace was the company The Nit Fairies, located in Midlothian. You have to take out a small loan to use them but I cannot stress this enough – they are worth it. These ladies, The Nit Fairies, saved me from the nut house. We arrived on Thursday, received an all-natural treatment that lasted about three hours, and were lice free when we went home. We cleaned the house again, went back for a follow-up yesterday, and are officially free of lice. So take my advice, forget saving for college, every parent should put a little money away for the Nit Fairies; they are going to be your best friends when you have unwanted visitors.
