As I brush my teeth at 2am, I see something out of the corner of my eye. I feel like I am in a Stephen King novel. A single adult louse is crawling along a strand of hair on my bathroom floor. It reaches the end of the hair and then just sits on the floor. I grab my lint roller and whack it, like Whack-a-Mole. I lint roller my entire floor. I put the lint roller sheets in the garbage, tie up the bag and then walk it outside to the can. There is no such thing as being too careful. You are supposed to treat everyone in your house at the same time with the lice shampoo, but there are five of us and only so many hours in the day. So far three of us are infected and the other two family members seem fine, but is it only a matter of time?
Let’s rewind the horror movie by an hour. As I was trimming my daughter’s nails (with my headlamp on so I could see in our dark living room), she kept scratching right at the base of her neck. I flash my headlamp on her hair and gasp.
“What?” she asks.
I continue to flash the light and watch half a dozen dark lice scamper around her head. One crawls out onto her forehead, and I pick it off. Two days ago, I thought I picked a fruit fly out of her hair, but now I know what it was.
I respond honestly: “Umm, you have lice.”
She bursts into tears. I hug her. I’m terrified, angry, and on the verge of tears myself. I run her a bath (not that this is going to kill them, but at least it will contain them. Even the chlorine in a swimming pool doesn’t kill them). I can picture them all over the living room carpet and couch. I imagine our house being fumigated and lice taking it over. I think back to that Goosebumps TV episode where giant lice infest the school. We need a special treatment shampoo. I chat to my lice expert friend on speaker phone while driving to Superstore. I feel as if I have failed to protect my children, but she reassures me that it has nothing to do with hygiene and lice are treatable. They exist. They feed on our blood. It’s surprising that I have made it through 40 years of my life without having lice.
I manage to get my daughter to sleep by midnight (after applying the treatment, combing out a ton of adult lice from her head, changing her sheets and then vacuuming). I check my head; of course, I am infected too. I treat myself and then fall into bed.
The next morning, I wash out my daughter’s treatment and comb her hair one more time before school. She’s going to be a zombie but insists on going to school. I drag myself to my home office and connect to my online work meeting. I’m wearing my rubber ducky robe and shower cap because I am erring on the side of more treatment soaking time. My boss says: “What, no video? You’re always on video.” I describe my attire and state. I receive empathetic comments as my coworkers describe their own personal lice horror stories.
Fast forward to the next evening. I’m hugging my son good night at 9pm and counting the minutes until I can crash. I spot something on his pillow. I get my headlamp and I see eggs clinging to the front strands of his hair. He is freaking out, but I decide to go the science route to help calm him. I stick the louse under his pocket microscope and turn on the tiny light.
I treat my son. Over time I re-treat my daughter and myself again. Then we repeat the entire process and double treatments again in April. The sequel begins. Either we didn’t get rid of them all or we were re-contaminated. Either way, I don’t enjoy where all my spare time and thoughts are spent.
For the rest of the school year, I continue to condition all three of our heads once per week and comb through our hair with a lice comb. Finally, by the summer, we’re safe. We’re lice free. I stop my weekly deep conditioning and combing. My oldest daughter and husband have still never had lice to this day. One year later, I still check everyone every Sunday because we don’t want to star in a trilogy.