So, you think your Halloween was scary?
I've got you beat. We've had the creepiest, most horrible Halloween surprise EVER.
A ghost? A haunted house? Bats in the attic?
Nope.
HEAD LICE.
When I called in to school this morning to report that Caroline would be out sick again, the secretary told me that not only are a whole bunch of kids out sick with this same bug, but also that an outbreak of head lice has been found in the 5th grade.
No sign of them on Caroline's head yet, but (knocking on wood) I've never had to deal with this and I'm a bit uncertain about how to tell the difference between the lice nits and plain old dandruff. I've been looking at pictures on the internet (yuck) and now I'm ready to do another check with my lighted magnifying glass.
Keep your fingers crossed for us that we've dodged this bullet.
[7pm: No nits in sight after careful inspection. Phew. Makes you itch just thinking about it, doesn't it?]
Good luck with the lice! We had 4 outbreaks in a year at our previous kindergarten, and luckily managed to evade the little critters. Ditto for the one outbreak at the current Kindergarten. Just tell Caroline not to bump heads with the other kids ;-)
ReplyDeleteDiane,
ReplyDeleteI am sending you an email introduction to another blogger friend of mine who just went through this a few months ago with her daughter. Chat and make friends.
Ick!! I had lice in Kindergarten and I think at the age of five, it was the worst thing that had happened to me. Guess I had a nice childhood! Hope you dogdge the bullet.
ReplyDeleteWhen my children were young we had a few outbreaks and my kids were affected. At the local drug store on Friday after school I was buying RID and the clerk said "I would say have a nice weekend, but I guess you won't be..." I often wonder what she would have said if I had been buying contraceptives or KY jelly.
ReplyDeleteAfter 25 years in an elementary classroom, I'm all too familiar with the head lice problem. Every time I found that one of my students had them, my head would start itching and I would drive 40 miles to my mother's house to have her look through my hair. I didn't like the thought of putting the 'insecticide' on my head if it wasn't necessary. It's easy to tell the difference between nits and dandruff. If you can blow it off, it's dandruff - the nits are actually glued to the hair shaft.
ReplyDeleteThat Rid stuff works great. We used it on our cat.
ReplyDeleteHead lice aren't that difficult to deal with provide you just remember it's a removal problem!
ReplyDeleteA lot of detail here.
head lice removal
we had the excitement last year of my six year old and I coming down with scabies. not as bad as lice in that you dont get the egg issue and they die a lot sooner off your body than lice do, but you have to get a stronger prescription version of RID because the lower OTC version doesnt work on scabies mites (also known, for good reason, as "itch mites") the treatment is particularly unappealing because you have to cover every inch of your body (and they do mean everything) except your face. and sleep in it overnight and then shower it off in the morning. yuck. may it never happen to any of you.
ReplyDeleteOur one experience with head lice occured when our niece, age 12, came to visit from California, bringing them with her, I suppose as a hostess gift? I don't know! Needless to say, I was not the most gracious of recipients!!!
ReplyDeleteDD had them last year :(.
ReplyDeleteThey hate, really hate, hair conditioner. If you do get an outbreak, wash hair, and then put on the conditioner, leave for a few minutes, rinse and comb the hair out with a nit comb. It really works! They also detest the smell of Lavender. DD regularly combs Lavender water through her hair.
We've only had lice once, and I guess it is like labor, you just know it when it is really happening. Lice is more sticky than dandruff, so you can't just shake it off, and it is generally stuck to the hair close to the scalp, rather than the scalp itself.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest problem I had with lice was even though my daughter was the one that had it, my head kept itching out of sympathy, or hypochondria. I did the Rid stuff too, so I knew I didn't have it, but that didn't stop it from itching me!