Pestilence

Gross things that happen when you are a parent, part I

When your child tells you her head is itchy, you can do many things. Or you can do nothing, and figure it’s dry skin from too much swimming. We lived in Naples, Florida, a block form the beach. Take a shower – use conditioner. I’ve got stuff to do around the house, like plan meals for five, carpool, and keep four kids alive amidst the chaos of working on my MFA.

Her complaints were falling on deaf ears. As a parent, sometimes you just have to say, “Figure it out – you’re fine.”

Until, horror of horrors, you realize it’s too late. “Mom, a bug fell out of my hair onto my book.”

“It’s a gnat! Keep reading."

“Uh, mom? I don’t think so.” I stop dead in my tracks. Think, think. Her head has been itching for what, a couple of weeks now? I looked through it once to see if she had a flaky scalp. Nothing. But now she could see the thing. Oh God no. But yes. It was. She brought it to me. A louse. Now the plural of louse is lice. There’s never just one. It’s the stuff of every elementary school parents' nightmares.

The note sent home from the school nurse begins something like this.

“Dear parents…” ending with, “Please check your child’s head and do not send an infested child to school.” Infested? That word is bad enough. But the pestilence it refers to is far worse. Give me four children with the stomach flu, vomiting simultaneously over a lice outbreak any day. And yes – they all have had stomach flu at the same time – I managed to invent a pretty neat contraption involving personal buckets to use as I ran from room to room trying to keep it all contained. But I digress.

Because a lice outbreak is like anything else - if one of your children has it, probably the others do too. And if they do, it’s all over the house. Think "If you give a mouse a cookie."

My head is itching right now.

I looked in her hair. What I found was alarming. Infestation was not the word. Colonization was more accurate. Lice are transparent little bastards, and when said child is blonde, it’s hard to see them. I could see them very well. How could I not have noticed? How could it have gotten so bad? “I told you my head was itchy, Mom.”

Quick. Once you realize the task at hand, your mind goes into overdrive. Nearest pharmacy? I can be back home in 20 minutes. Check online – I’m pretty wary about these harsh pesticides in over the counter remedies. Online searching leads me to a special comb. It’s yellow, or the handle is. The tiny prongs, like a flea comb, are for combing though each strand of hair to detach the little nits or lice eggs. It’s a process and it’s disgusting.

The Comb - accept no imitations

First, you must soak your child’s hair in this stinky mess for about 15 minutes. Then rinse - a bit satisfying as you see them wash down the drain. But now comes the fun part. You have to comb out the rest - soso many. Most are dead or near dead at this stage. The really tedious task is yet to come. The nits - those will take hours. Part of the dread that fills me is knowing I will have to repeat this process on all the other three to make sure.

Nits - they look like tiny elongated pearls

Laundry? Everything must be washed in hot water. Stuffed animals too. The ones that can’t be must be sealed in a big bag for up to two weeks. Gross. I’m glad that they’d be dead by that time, but what about their disgusting little clear-ish bodies clinging with their sharp little mother f-ing hook legs to my kids’ toys?

Comforters, blankets, mattress pads, all of it, in the bloody washing machine. And as I make my way to the laundry, I’m keenly aware that I’m unleashing whole new civilizations into the carpet on my way.

The vacuuming. Rugs and furniture. Every surface wiped down. All clothing had to be washed in hot water too.

The fun part is sectioning of hair and pulling the lice comb through each strand. You see a little white bump adhered to the hair follicle; to use your fingernails to ease it off, pulling down the length of the hair strand. And if you are a crap mom like me who is in denial when her daughter tells her that her head is itchy, you seal your own fate. There’s that much more to do. Have you ever combed through someone’s hair for three hours at a time? I’m sure it feels really nice if you are on the receiving end. Who doesn’t like a scalp massage? For the comber, though, the neck pain and shoulder exertion required to hold your head at odd angles causes crippling postural damage.

On and on it goes. “Can we be done yet?” I say five or ten more minutes. Even she's had enough. But I’m not satisfied. I wash the comb with sudsy water and know that I will repeat this process in a week. Meanwhile, every day I will worry that I missed a nit and between combings. It will have the good fortune to sprout into a volatile louse nymph. A nymph turns into a louse and a louse turns into lice plural.

Nymphette - kidding, louse nymph

We start the whole sequence again, and to be extra sure, twice more. Every day doing laundry in the hot cycle JUST IN CASE.

You think this is a lot of work? It gets better. My other three children succumbed too. Same process for them. And God damn it, working on a drawing, something dropped from my head onto my paper. Yes. Me too. The absolute worst of the worst. Because no one, and I mean no one would spend that kind of time and care making sure such a plague is eradicated like a mom. By this time all I could do was cry.

My mother visited us during the second half of this crisis. She does not handle life well at times and was utterly useless during this outbreak. You must understand that my relationship with my mother is adversarial at best. The callous treatment I received by my mother growing up gave me a low-grade vendetta that would last a lifetime, so a part of me derived great pleasure from the prospect of freaking her out in the wake of our pandemic. To give you an example, I used to mess her up badly by moving the car in the super market parking lot. She'd come out with the cart and not know wtf happened. It was hilarious. This time I took great pleasure feigning horror as I looked at her head pretending to see her hair move. I told her they might be on the furniture still even though I took vacuuming seriously and to a whole new level. She refused to sit anywhere.

As for me? I was the last one standing. The pestilence was eradicated in everyone else at last, except for that last drop on my drawing. I used the shampoo, yes. What was left of it. And then I slathered olive oil all over my head, covered it with a shower cap, and slept like this for the next week. Somehow I got lucky and they disappeared. Thank God. No one wants to comb mom’s hair. Or sure they do, if they get to watch TV.

I came though the other side.

Since then I have developed my own arsenal of sorts.

After the shampoo (try to find a nontoxic kind) and combing out, I suggest a mix of eucalyptus oil - a few good size drops in water in a spray bottle and shake it up. By accident I discovered my Jo Malone bath oil does the trick (it also keeps mosquitos away!). Spray it on the head and lightly massage into the scalp. Then put on a shower cap for sleeping. If you want to get extra crafty, wrap your head in saran wrap before the shower cap - that will give them en extra blast of heat.

Do you think my girls wore their hair down again to school? No way.

We have been unlucky with lice and have endured our fair share of outbreaks over the years. Even a month ago, my 14- year-old daughter comes to me and asks, “Mom, will you check my hair?” My answer? Yes. Right now. And you can be damned sure I will do a good job.

Moms know how to avert new crises – that's our specialty. Nothing phases me. Do you know why? I have conquered lice infestations and lived to tell the tale.

Multiple streams of income? Fetch me my lice comb. I’m on it.

Illustrations © Johanna Westerman 2016, created exclusively for this steemit post.

Do you think I enjoyed drawing these vile creatures? Facing my fears, @camilla – this one is for you.