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February 14, 2007
By DEBBIE ALEXANDER
Special to the Palisadian-Post
As a mother of three young children, I was sympathetic to a flurry of e-mails I recently received from parents alarmed about an epidemic of head lice at Canyon Charter Elementary School. However, until those creepy crawlers began to hatch in my 7-year-old daughter's hair, I had no idea how much they could stir up a household.
We were standing outside on a Sunday afternoon when I looked down and saw them. The sun was shining in just the right spot. 'Oh my God,' I shrieked. My husband immediately told me to calm down. 'Not so loud,' he said. 'What is this in her hair?' I said, and quickly lifted up her braids to check at the nape of her neck. Sure enough, there were more of those silver-looking things stuck on her hair.
I dashed off to Pharmaca with my daughter in tow. We headed straight to the pharmacist on duty and I pleaded with her to please take a quick look at my daughter's head. 'If it's head lice, I'm not going anywhere near her,' she said.
Another lady behind the counter handed me two different types of shampoo--Nix and Rid. She explained that the nits (lice eggs) needed to be picked out of my daughter's hair with a fine-tooth comb. Nix actually includes a plastic one, but what I really needed was a metal one.
At the front register, an employee generously peeked at my daughter's head and confirmed my worst suspicion: she had lice. She handed me a magnifying glass so I could see all of them.
How did this happen? I have had children at Canyon since 1999 and, in the past, there have been one or two cases of head lice a year. But this year, it is rampant. Just about every grade has been affected. The last letter I received from the school notifying me that 'we discovered a case of head lice in your child's classroom today' came home with my fifth grader. Whenever I receive one of these delightful notes, I begin to check my children's hair--not obsessively, but a couple of times of day. My daughter insists that I check her dolls' hair, too.
Our school nurse, Marilyn Schmitter, scheduled an emergency meeting to calm the fears of neurotic parents. She passed out information on head lice and explained: 'Their whole reason for being is to get a blood meal on a scalp and lay eggs. Their lifespan is just 24 hours.' But that is long enough to spread quickly through a school.
Schmitter continued, 'The best way to contain them is sectioning the hair and combing them out with a fine-tooth metal comb and vacuuming the house.'
The day we found the lice, I spent more than two hours picking nits out of my daughter's hair. Before I began, I chopped off her long hair. 'Is that really necessary?' my husband asked. I quoted from the box of head lice treatment: 'Short hair is much easier than long hair.'
The plastic comb didn't work. Scotch tape was helpful, but not perfect. Most of the time, I had to put my thumb and forefinger together on the strand of hair and literally slide the nit off. I went crazy combing hair, only to discover more of these buggers. When I finished, I doused her hair in tea tree oil as an extra precaution. (Prior to our outbreak, I had heard that lice dislike the smell of tea tree oil shampoo, but we were already using the special shampoo when the lice appeared.)
My daughter stayed home from school the following day and I alerted Canyon to yet another case of head lice. She was the third child in her class to be affected this school year.
I heard about 'The Hair Whisperer,' a woman who will come to your home and manually remove the lice and eggs from your child's hair without using chemical products. My husband e-mailed her on that Sunday and Amy the Hair Whisperer arrived the next day. She asked for a Tupperware container of water and I watched closely as she first went through my daughter's dry hair with her hands. She found five remaining nits and just yanked the hairs out. Then she pulled out a metal comb and slowly combed her hair a few strands at a time.
'This is not a bad case at all,' she said. 'You were very thorough.'
I had her check my hair, and I was okay. We made arrangements for her to look at my two boys, and I wanted her to see my husband, too, but she said, 'I won't need to. The husbands hardly ever get it.'
Amy founded her business last year after experiencing a similar situation at her son's elementary school. 'Let's say that, Day One, you pick out 100 nits,' she said. 'Each day, you have to keep checking your child's hair for more nits. Shampoo is not enough.' Amy also debunked the tree tea oil theory.
She recommended that I sack up stuffed animals in a garbage bag for two weeks. 'If they have lice and nits, then they will hatch and die,' Amy said.
For one week, my house became a hotel--the sheets just got washed every day and, before bedtime, pillows, favorite stuffed animals and blankets went into the dryer for 30 minutes. I am now in the habit of checking their heads every day, and they are all lice-free.
A flyer was recently posted outside of each classroom at Canyon. It has a picture of a louse on it and reads: 'Attention Parents! Thank you for carefully checking the head of your child each day. Together we will make Canyon a lice-free school.' So far, it seems to be working because I have not heard about any new cases of lice.
For more information: Headlice.org and www.hairwhisperers.com.
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