**As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases**

The Spawn of Satan, Phase Four

Read Phase One Here
Read Phase Two Here
Read Phase Three Here

For Six days, life went on as normal (as normal as life could be combing frequently, vacuuming, and washing). Kyle was getting ready to leave for a campaign on Saturday. On Thursday morning before that, after Kyle had left for work, I was combing LK's hair and saw teeny tiny microscopic itchies in her hairline. She cried when I told her and I let her. And I cried with her. This is tear-worthy.

Phase Four: TELL ME WHAT TO DO TO GET THESE DAMN S.O.B.'s OUT OF MY BABY'S HAIR!

I believe those were the exact words I used to the sweet nurse on the phone at my pediatricians office. Keeping her professional cool, she responded (hiding a laugh) with, "Maam, I am so sorry, all I heard was 'damn s.o.b.'s.' What is it we are dealing with here?"

Basically, she told me I had to comb even more than I was and recommended a prescription (different from my friend's). My pediatrician had guaranteed it would do the job.

After going to two Target's to find one that had it in stock, they told me it was going to cost $177. Yes. ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SEVEN DOLLARS for the medicine guaranteed to kills these damn bugs. (We hadn't met her Rx deductible for the year yet. But still....ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY SEVEN DOLLARS!) I choked back sobs as I mustered up as much kindness as I could in my response to the pharmacy technician, "we will not be purchasing that medication today". "Would you like us to keep it on file?" "gasp...gasp...no."

Now, I do need to explain something. I had been doing a lot of research and I was finding a LOT a LOT of stuff talking about how as a species, Lice are becoming more and more immune to the chemical shampoos and pesticides: meaning they don't work. They are calling them "super-lice". Now, because so much info you can find to read is conflicting I was trying to take everything with a grain of salt but this definitely seamed to be the case in our situation since all of the shampoos we had tried were chemical shampoos. I really was to the point that if I could have a 100% guarantee, I would have paid the $177. But since I had this info in the back of my head, I just couldn't do it.

After some sobbing, I looked up a salon that sells a product that is chemical-free and said to kill lice and their eggs and even had the ability to release the glue the nits make to stick to your hair. The best part is that it is safe to use as often as necessary. I paid $25 and brought it home and we shampooed.

And we shampooed every day, twice a day for the first 2 and then every day for 8 days. Combing and combing, washing and combing and shampooing and combing. Vacuuming and combing and combing and coming and shampooing. Vacuuming and washing and combing and combing and combing. (All of this, by the way, when Kyle was gone for 6 of the days).

And shampooing.

And vacuuming.

And washing.

And combing.

And combing.

After 8 days of not finding so much as a speck in her hair that could even begin to camouflage itself as a nit, we stopped.

We are now on day 15 of being lice and nit-free. We check every day. And bless her little heart, she cannot scratch her head without a hard-core inspection. And then another one 10 minutes later.

Here are some things I have learned from our lice-capades:

  • There are some things in life that require a cuss word. Lice is one of them. 
  • I have the most incredible 4-year old in the world. She amazes me. 
  • Lice is suffering. It may be first-world definition of suffering, but that's where I live right now.
  • Psychological itching is intense and contagious
  • I have found myself inadvertently peering into people's scalps. I'm trying to stop. It's kind of hard to stop focusing on scalps when that's what you do for a month straight. 
  • There will be some things in life that you just try everything and nothing works. Only by the grace of God do you survive. 
If anyone is interested in the products we ended up using with the best success, I would be happy to share, I just don't want to add to the millions of conflicting mass info available on the web. Just email me: carriemwiley[at]gmail[dot]com

(**As much as I love and appreciate sharing advice and am constantly looking for new ideas and normally I love this blog being a place for that, this is one subject where I want to kindly ask you not to. As you will continue to read, we tried a lot of things, have done a lot of reading and found so much conflicting information and advice we finally just had to make decisions based on what we felt like was best for our family. I think most people who have dealt with lice come to a point of being so frustrated that even the most well-meaning advice is discouraging and not helpful. The reason I chose to write about this at all is because I believe this blog is a place for me to write and share our real life: the good the bad and the ugly. This is the ugly. That being said, even though I think we are on the other side of this, my heart is still a *tad* tender to this subject. I ask that you limit your comments to encouragement only and reserve your advice for your own personal blogs or forums. Thanks for understanding. **)

1 comment

  1. Oh Carrie! I'm so sorry you guys have had to go through this! If it helps your feelings any, you're not alone in having recurring "lice-capades". We see it way too often in our school (note: I don't have a clue how those moms eventually get rid of them and don't want to add to the boo-coodles of info you've read anyway). And those poor babies end up missing so much school because of it. We even have one very unfortunate teacher who manages to get them anytime they pop up at school - even if its not in her classroom! They are most definitely cuss-word worthy.

    Oh and those psychological itchies? *nods* Couldn't agree more.

    *hugs* I'm praying they are long gone this time!

    ReplyDelete