Me and Jamie did notice that Katryn kept scratching her head an awful lot the whole time she was here, but we didn't really think too much of it. She had her curly hair pulled up in a ponytail, and I just figured that it was itchy (you know how ponytails get after awhile).
Last night, Katryn did mention casually to me while she was scratching her head that she had "fleas". So I just figured that maybe she really did have fleas in her house, and that she might have gotten a few in her hair. (She lives in a mobile home in a nearby trailer park, which I have heard has a problem with fleas). No big deal, right? Fleas happen to everybody once in a while, right?
Anyway, late this afternoon, right before Katryn's aunt came to pick her up, I was in the mood to take myself a nice, hot, bubble bath. The last thing I did was wash my hair. I had noticed that my head was feeling just a little bit itchy off and on today, but I just chalked it up to the fact that I hadn't washed my hair in a few days, and that I'd been wearing it up in a clip for the past couple of days.
So I ran the conditioner through my hair just like always, and just like always, I pulled out the stray hair-strands to rub onto the side of the shower wall to scrape off and dispose of later. But what do I see in the middle of the small wad of hair? It just looked like a bit of dirt, but something told me to look closer at it. So I did, and discovered that it had legs. It was a bug. It was a freaking louse. I was absolutely horrified, but somehow not surprised.
I got out of the bath and immediately went to the living room to tell Jamie what I had discovered. Jamie and Lilly were sitting on the couch alone together watching TV, and I asked "Is Katryn gone?" Jamie told me yeah; that her aunt had come and picked her up as soon as I had gotten in the bath. I said "GOOD...'cause she has HEAD LICE". And I told Jamie and Lilly how I had found a louse in my hair just moments before. Then Jamie looked at Lilly's hair and saw them crawling around without really having to look hard at all.
So we got Lilly into the bathtub immediately and began scrubbing her head. I don't know how many lice we ended up seeing floating around drowned in the tub, but it was enough to be grossed out by it. And I picked a bunch out of Lilly's hair while she was still in the bathtub.
At that point, we realized that we needed to strip off the beds, and pretty much basically wash everything in the entire house that could possibly go into the washing machine.
After seeing that the lice were still alive in Lilly's hair even after a good hair-washing, I made a flying trip to Wal-Mart to purchase some lice-and-lice-egg killing spray for hair. It was so embarrassing standing there in the Lice Remedy aisle, perusing the choices. I pretended to be checking out the band-aids. It felt like the entire store was crowding around me, watching and judging. I wanted to crawl off into a little hole. Finally, I made my choice, and then I went to the Housewares section to purchase some new bed pillows. I needed a new one anyway.
On my way to the checkout, I saw a couple that Jamie used to work for, and they had their kids with them. I said Hi to them, and they asked me how I was. I told them that I would be fine, once I got rid of the lice! They were very empathetic and said that the same thing happened to them once. They told me that the spray that I had picked out was the best kind to use, so I was glad. They said trust them...they had tried all the different kinds of stuff they offer, but that spray turned out to be the best. So that made me feel good. I thanked them and sauntered off to make my embarrassing purchase.
I wished that our Wal-Mart had a self-checkout so that I wouldn't have to put my lice-away spray up on the counter for the cashier (and all the rest of the world) to see, but we don't, so I had to reluctantly plop it up there. Thankfully the lady didn't say anything. I guess it could've been worse. At least I wasn't buying vaseline, condoms, and a big cucumber or something. O__o LOL!
So I rushed home with the lice-away spray (I bought 2 bottles to be sure to have enough), and immediately began spraying Lilly's hair with it. The spray came with a little flea-comb-like thing to use to help get the little boogers out of the hair with.
So I sprayed and sprayed until Lilly's hair was completely soaked, and commenced to "flea"-combing her hair. I was surprised at the number of lice that I ended up combing out, even after Jamie had scrubbed her hair with shampoo, and she had soaked it underwater for a long time. Those stupid things are hard to get rid of! I made sure to kill each louse that I combed out. It was disgusting. And I was PISSED that we were having to go through such an ordeal.
Jamie texted his cousin (Katryn's aunt, who had come to pick her up) and asked her if she was aware that Katryn had head lice, and eventually she texted back and said "no she doesn't...she was checked at school right before Christmas Break because they'd had an outbreak in the Primary School, and the school nurse told us that she just had dry scalp".
Jamie told her to look again.
Again, she came back with "I had Katryn's mom look in my hair, and I don't have anything. And we looked at Katryn's hair and don't see anything".
Jamie told her to look AGAIN.
We didn't hear anything back.
Let's just pray that they treat that poor child's lice so that she (or anybody else for that matter) doesn't have to suffer with it anymore! Geez!!! (BTW, they're moving from that mobile home to a different house closer to town in the next few days, so I feel sorry for whoever ends up renting the mobile home that they are about to vacate...the new renters will most likely end up with the lice)!!! :/ :(
Then I got Jamie down and soaked his hair with the spray. I combed and combed, but only ended up finding 1 louse in his hair.
Jamie returned the favor and soaked and combed my hair, but he didn't find any more lice in mine. Let's hope we discovered it early enough to completely head it off at the pass, and we'll get rid of it as quickly as it came on. Thank God I just so happened to notice it in time before we became completely infested...I hope there aren't any yucky lice eggs lurking around our house somewhere that will hatch out and breed to make more. Yuck! >:P
I've lost track of how many loads of laundry we've already done since early this evening. And there is still a gigantic mountain of it left to do. We'll probably have to be washing non-stop for the next couple of days, I'd say. Dammit!
Oh, well. I guess we needed to clean the bedrooms anyway. This lice snafu just lit a fire under our asses! ;)
And everybody say a prayer that no lice ended up at my brother's house, because Jamie took Lilly and Katryn over there to play with little Claire for a while (before we knew that Katryn was infested)! I texted my sister-in-law Jenna to alert her to the potential for them to have a lice infestation (and to apologize in advance if they ended up with it), and Jenna went ahead and washed Claire's bedding just in case to be on the safe side.
Stupid lice. Ugh!!! >:{
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