I bought four different combs to address the issue. Here they are soaking in alcohol. The first one, big blue, is by far the most effective of the lot, but the other three are much more tolerable to young children and large men who behave like young children, when having their hair combed mercilessly by the resident woman with a mission.
When dealing with such an issue, what good is comfort if it doesn’t effectively address the situation? I used the long red comb first, progressed to the short red (the short blue is actually a dog flea comb, but is virtually the same as the small red comb) and did the final pass with big blue.
But first, I shaved BB’s head with the 1/8″ attachment. Because when I tried big blue on him the first time, it was too torturous. I mean, I was practically in tears myself, when I did my own first pass. It pulled out clumps of hair. Literally. I thought it would be much kinder to give him a ‘special’ haircut, than to wrestle with him and that unforgiving comb.
He’s still beautiful (to me), even without hair. When he saw his reflection he said, “Juss like Uncle T!” Because when my dear brother joined us the other week for our short family get together, he was sporting his summer shaved do. And everyone loves Uncle T. He’s a great guy, all around.
I love the bright attitude that my little one is blessed with. He is my shining star.
And the best news is, that after combing, shaving, combing, combing, combing, I found absolutely nothing on my little guy’s head. So I pronounce him clean. He wasn’t the carrier.
And more good news, is that after yesterday’s thorough combings, I found absolutely nothing in my hair, and nothing in Gadget’s (except dandruff, in his case). So I am pronouncing our home and heads louse free. I did buy a spare set of sheets (we had only one set, because we have a new bed, and I was waiting for a sale to get a spare set) so we wouldn’t have to stay up so late waiting for them to dry after washing nightly. We were up until 2 a.m. that first night, since the whole combing process took hours, and I didn’t think to strip the sheets until after I’d finished combing.
We’ll still go through a thorough combing every few days for the next two weeks, to be completely and absolutely certain, but it was SO very heartening to find nothing at all yesterday.
The previous day was, understandably, a freak-out, not having faced such a thing before, and then to discover those nasty egg pods. I’ve since learned that nits are the empty pods left after hatching. So we found no nits, actually, and we found no lice or nymphs. What we did find were some eggs, in both my hair and Gadget’s, but we removed them, and hopefully, hopefully, we’ve eradicated the problem. Finding them in Gadget’s spurred me to shave BB, because Gadget’s hair is already very very short, and I found nothing upon visual inspection, but that comb, big blue, found about five or six of the very same pod things that I found in mine. And under my microscope (yes, I have a mini scope for inspecting saliva for crystal patterns to detect potential fertility, from days gone by, and it does come in handy once in a while, although, it IS freaky to see what things look like that close up), they sadly and undoubtedly looked exactly like the photos I found on Doctor Google. So yes. Freak-out.
It’s amazing what something like that can do to one’s mental state. Yes, it can happen to anyone. No, it doesn’t mean you live in a pigsty. But all the same, it makes one feel so unclean. An outcast. A leper. That’s the second time I’ve used that word this week.
Conversely, the elation and relief one feels when one can say the problem has passed, is simply wonderful. And sleeping in fresh sheets two nights in a row is kind of nice too.
Still a bit befuddled as to where the lice came from. Not daycare. Not us. I wonder if possibly Sissy had them already, and brought them with her. They don’t jump, leap, or fly. We did go to a theme park, and possibly they were transmitted by contact with the head rest. Or could it have happened via the head rest on an airplane? Eeegads, one would hope not! It remains a mystery. Poor girl has very thick, long, luscious curly locks. I can’t imagine her being able to comb through it with something like big blue. I wish her well.
