Lice. A disgusting topic to talk about but one we have to highlight nonetheless. It is like being behind the wheel; you have no control of all the other people around you, but you can stop yourself from running them over.
Lice, you should know are not picky. Whether you take five showers a day or five showers a month, they will easily pitch tent on your head given half a chance. As long as you have blood running through you then you qualify. They are so dependent on human blood; so dependent that they cannot go a day without it (talk about being thirsty). They easily change heads from one person to another.
First thing you should NOT do when your only child comes home from school with a head that is well inhabited by these blood suckers is to panic. It does not help at all. Throwing everything she touches in the waste bag and declaring quarantine is not fixing the problem. Calm down, allow yourself to relax and follow these three simple guidelines.
One thing you should not do is to go to your pharmacist to get something over the counter. Truth is it doesn’t work and it could have very serious implications and health effects that you do not want. Do not even think of trying to pick them out one by one. You wouldn’t get even half of them and the time that it takes, it’s just ridiculous. Good news is that you do not need six years of medical school to fix the problem. Try getting a conditioner and coating everyone’s hair. Leave it on for at least 8 hours (preferably overnight) since this is the long it takes to kill them. People go for different alternatives like Vaseline and mayo. These are hard to remove and as far as mayonnaise is concerned, it is disastrous since 8 hours out of the fridge means that it becomes toxic and if this leaks into your blood stream through the head, the results are not pretty. Enough said.
Do the laundry, from their bedding to their clothes. It is best to use the hottest setting for this since there is no taking any chance of leaving these things alive. To be even more sure, dry each laundry load twice. After all there is nothing to loose and that much more to gain.
The morning after, the breadwinner gets to be first in the cleaning process, them being the head provider and all. After they are well showered, with most of the conditioner out it is time to get picking. Have them sit on a comfortable chair. Get the best lighting in the house because you will definitely need it. You are on the advantage if you have a magnifying glass somewhere since it will improve your accuracy. At this point in time, the head will seem much bigger in surface area than it usually looks but don’t be deterred by this. A little patience is all that is required.
Get a lice comb and section the hair into portions and tie them all separate with rubber bands. Taking attention on one part, remove all the eggs with no mercy at all and once you’re dead sure that you have gotten rid of them, tie back that part and move to the next. It helps if you start from the back making your way to the front consecutively. Picking is the worst of it especially for the kids since they make the job so much harder for you. To reduce this, let them watch a favorite movie to lessen their movement. Try as much as possible not to be irritated because chances are you will be tempted to be on several occasions.
If you complete this process up to this far and you are still in one piece then you can afford a smile since you have just completed the thick of it. The rest of it is not as demanding.
The only other sacrifice you have to make is to repeat the whole picking procedure for another eight days running, making sure you do not miss out on one because that is simply bad news. The cycle is just as east to start all over again and you don’t want that. Redo the conditioner thing on the seventh day for extra caution.
To stop the lice armies from ever invading again, add a little peppermint oil to the family shampoo. They really don’t like that and they will not even consider setting tent on your family again. Besides peppermint is good for your head so it’s a big plus. Neem seed oil does the same, maybe even better but there’s a catch. It does not smell so good. Beside that, it is actually quite good. It not only prevents them from living on your head, it also obliterates them.
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