Lice Tales
A friend sent this and begged me to post it …
We had head lice for what seemed like forever, but was actually from April to August, of the same year.
At first, I figured we could just buy some stuff at the drug store, follow the directions and be done with it. So we did.
It didn’t work.
Called one of those nurse hot lines, not much help there. Spoke with a school nurse, more help. Finally, I scanned the Internet for answers. Lots of people post their tales of lice, and they were mostly all tragedies, with a few product promotions, and some that were downright scary.
The first thing I learned was that lice aren’t really harmful, and they don’t indicate poor hygiene. So, they’re annoying and you get them by being unlucky. This was very comforting, except that they are very annoying. They make your head itch, you avoid people you enjoy, and you have to figure out how to get rid of the nasty little bugs.
In the first round of getting rid of lice, I washed all the linens in hot water. Some things went in bags in the garage. This was all very tiresome. To save you from reading until the end of this post - I think it was also unnecessary. I did boil the hair stuff (clips, combs, brushes) each time we treated for lice. I vacuumed the sheets on the beds some days. However, by the end of the saga, I would change the linens on the beds, and towels, boil the combs and brushes, then try whatever experiment upon our heads. Boiling hair accessories also destroyed many of them.
Suggestions and ideas, with results, from the web and the voices in my head. I’m leaving out the brand names, because I don’t want to discourage you from trying them. Just because they didn’t work for us doesn’t mean they won’t work for you.
- Anti-lice pesticides - the regular over the counter stuff you get at the drug store. They didn’t work for us. I’m not saying they are bad, but they didn’t solve the problem. We followed the instructions carefully.
- Non-medicated, oily stuff from the drug store - this was a very oily product. It made a big mess and didn’t work for us.
- Shampoo, with salt - this was very fun to mix, didn’t work.
- Shaving cream - smells great, difficult to get out of your hair, didn’t work.
- Skin softening bath oil - very strong smell, very difficult to get out of your hair, didn’t work.
- Mayonnaise - nasty, just nasty. Didn’t work. Kids still won’t eat chicken salad.
- Vacuum cleaner crevice attachment, with lice comb, and vacuum. Kind of fun. Didn’t work. Tried to sell it as an invention. That didn’t work either.
- Combing, with a lice comb, and vinegar, wiping frequently with tissues. Fills the wastebasket with tissues, lice remain on head. We did this a lot. We watched a lot of videos. Some of the videos were very funny, some were awful. The lice watched them with us.
- Haircuts - the kids had long hair. After haircuts, they had one inch less. No effect.
- Coal tar shampoo - I didn’t do this to the kids, just me. It didn’t work and I smelled like driveway sealer for three days.
- Dandruff shampoo - Didn’t work, but it smelled nice.
- Blowdryer - Didn’t work.
- Olive oil - didn’t try this, after the other oily stuff.
- Soap - fancy liquid soaps - didn’t work, but they smelled nice
- Electric lice comb - fun to play with. Didn’t get rid of the lice.
- Went to the pediatrician - they told us they didn’t see any. But offered a prescription, which we declined
- Hair dye - I did this to myself as a last resort. It worked. I dyed my hair the same color as it is, and it worked.
- Vodka - As a last resort, I bought some cheap vodka and used it, very carefully on the kids. It worked. By very carefully, I mean that I used a sippy cup to pour it on their scalp, had them cover their eyes with a towel, and left it on for 20 minutes, after which it was washed out carefully. One treatment worked, although we did it a once or twice more just to be sure. One kid refused to wash it out of her hair and left it in overnight, with no apparent ill effects. Remember that vodka is very flammable.
- Shaving your head - this wasn’t an option, but it’s probably the quickest and surest solution to the problem.
After all was said and done, I learned that lice are very, very difficult to get rid of. I don’t think you can mechanically remove them, you have to kill them. I don’t think the bedding was the issue, although if you had a lot of them, it might be. It’s probably a battle of attrition and if they are attacked with enough discomfort, they will eventually die or just go away. Vodka was what finally worked. Whether the lice got drunk, or died, or had a heck of a party - we’ll never know. At least they’re gone.
Apparently one of the ingredients for some prescription lice medicine is … alcohol.
Most people who heard of my remedy joked about drinking the vodka, but we didn’t. Yuk.