OP/ED: Bet you're just itching to be more like me ...
By Christine Esovoloff
I’d like to share with you my past few weeks – it is a time in my life that I would like to leave behind and never re-visit again. EVER. It all started when my two sons came down with the chicken pox. Both were pretty nasty cases; they were itchy, sore, feverish, spotty, oozy, and WHINY! It was awesome. Anyway, I spent over two weeks giving spoonfuls of antihistamines and Tylenol, dotting calamine onto 80,000 spots, snuggling, and giving oatmeal baths. I feel like if you are going to get the full picture of my story, I should mention that chicken pox go everywhere; they were all through their hair, inside their ears, up their nostrils, in their mouths, and … other places.
Fun times.
At the same time, I developed what appeared to be an allergic reaction which presented itself as an itchy rash all down the back of my neck. Also, fun. Anyway, eventually the pox started to clear up (unlike my mystery rash) and I was finally able to take them out of the house (relief), so I booked a coffee date with a friend and went out into the light of day for the first time in weeks. I took my youngest with me as he is not in school yet and we both really enjoyed the outing. He jabbered away and climbed on and off my lap as my friend and I caught up on everything. Well, during this nice visit, I gazed down lovingly at my son, relieved that we were finally over all of the sickness and drama when something caught my eye … it was a big fat louse crawling through his hair. Double awesome.
That’s right, my son had lice. (Your head is itchy, isn’t it?) And, I figured that dollars to donuts, the older kid had it too. After all, they constantly feel the need to wrestle, which consists of rolling around on the floor and touching heads! Kids are so weird and gross! So, of course, I was horrified. My friend was very supportive but also backed away slowly and kept a safe distance of eight feet as she wished us well and shoo-ed us out the door.
I felt dirty. Itchy, and dirty. I wanted to shoo my louse-y child away, too. But I couldn’t. I mean, people don’t look kindly upon mothers that abandon their lice-infested kids on street corners. So I packed him up and went to a friend’s place to have her look through my hair, you know … just in case. She gave me a look over, reassured me that I was lice-free, gave a box of lice-killing stuff, and sent me on my itchy way. I grabbed the older one from school and sure enough, he was crawling with the little buggers. Apparently while they were fighting off the yucky varicella virus, their heads were being used as a breeding ground for disgusting little scalp-eating insects. (You’re itchy again, aren’t ya?) So I got home and started the whole ordeal of washing EVERYTHING, throwing everything else into bags and putting them into the freezer, and scraping my poor children’s (already scabby) scalps with that tiny little comb. After about two hours of hair pulling, washing, drying, vacuuming, and crying, my husband came home. Well, I’ll tell ya this much, there was no winking at him today (although I had developed a pretty good stress-induced eye spasm), and even my sassiest of undies couldn’t cheer me up. As you can imagine, he was thrilled to hear of our lice infestation and was even more excited when I checked through his hair and confirmed that he did, in fact, have them too. Bring on the more washing, more combing, more drying, more crying, and some swearing as well.
Throughout the whole de-lousing process, I could swear that I felt things crawling through my hair and even though my friend had reassured me that I was clean, I was still paranoid, so I phoned another friend and begged her to come over and check me. After another clean check and being lovingly reassured that I was lice-free, I was still worried so I decided to douse my hair in conditioner and give a comb through just to make myself feel better.
Well, after just two swipes of that magic little comb, I found them. I was loaded with the little bastards. Apparently my hair is the perfect camouflage for lice, not to mention the perfect breeding environment. Remember my allergic reaction neck rash that I mentioned earlier? Yea, well, apparently that rash was from the lice nibbling away at my delicious neck while I slept at night.
EVEN. MORE. AWESOME.
And anyone who knows me, knows that my hair is the consistency of a mixture of horse hair and steel wool, so the combing was extra fun. And to make the situation even more delectable, I have enough hair to cover about 10 heads so each combing session took about 2.5 hours. In total I spent about 12 hours combing my hair alone that week, and went through about a gallon of toxic pesticides. It was hell.
Oh, wait, there’s more. As soon as the whole lice fiasco was over, I found out that my dogs had fleas. That’s right – FLEAS!!! Why wouldn’t my dogs get freakin’ fleas?! I mean, it seems kind of fitting, doesn’t it?! Why shouldn’t we all itch together?! I think we all might as well just be eaten alive by flesh-eating insects that have taken over my home!
Then I cried. A lot.
Well, finally, the ordeal came to an end but it has left me with a neurosis that leaves me constantly clawing at my head in obsessive fear that my hair is still infested with lice and their larvae. My poor children are forced to endure daily ‘preventative’ combings and I also chase them around the house trying to spritz them with tea tree oil. They aren’t terribly cooperative. But on the upside, my house is really clean and I am completely caught up on my laundry. And we are lice, flea, and illness-free. Really. We’re good now.
Wanna come over?
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