We Had Lice

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liceLice.

Doesn’t just reading that word make your head itch?

These tiny, microscopic, creepy crawly bugs that strike fear into parents’ hearts everywhere will take over your entire household.

I know this because I had lice. My entire family had lice. And we lived, albeit scarred, to tell the tale.

My family had just returned from a wonderful, relaxing Florida vacation this past summer. I was in the shower, shampooing my hair, just happy to be home. I was unaware that we had brought hundreds of unwanted houseguests with us.

The bristles on my “home” hairbrush are much closer together than the ones on my “travel” hairbrush, and as I was dragging it through my hair after my shower, I noticed tiny little bugs on the sink. “That’s gross,” I thought. “It must be because no one has been in here for a week.”

And then I looked at my hairbrush, which was covered in tiny, wiggling bug bodies.

Reader, I did not even know what a lice bug looked like. I held one up on the tip of my pointer finger and compared it to a magnified photo of lice on my phone.

I realized the photo matched perfectly as someone started screaming.

It was me. I was the one screaming, as one does when one discovers one has brought lice home with one from vacation.

I frantically yelled for my husband to bring all of our kids into the bathroom. I completed urgent checks of everyone’s head.

My husband? He’s bald, so he was in the clear. Lucky man.

My two big kids? Also clean.

My two-year-old? Bug city. Her head was worse than mine. As I thought about it, this made sense. While on our vacation, my youngest had been sleeping between my husband and me every night. Unbeknownst to me, our heads also shared teensy tiny creatures as we slept.

My youngest and I immediately quarantined in the bathroom. My husband bought lice shampoo and dutifully went through my hair as I went through my daughter’s hair.

As I think back to those first few weeks, it was a whirlwind of lice shampoo, hair combing, and washing everything on extra hot—multiple times.

Even with our diligent quarantine, my two biggest kids already had nits, so they ended up with lice as well. Overall, we had lice in our house for about a month before it was totally gone.

You probably already fear getting lice. I won’t help assuage that fear by saying it wasn’t so bad because it was very bad. It was absolutely terrible. Once those little suckers take hold of you, they never want to leave.

So… how many times did you scratch your head while reading this?

0 times = Congratulations! You’re never getting lice.

1-2 times = Expect lice in the next year.

3-4 times = Lice will be in your house by summer.

5+ times = You already have lice.

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