I had gotten myself ready for work and was in the process of getting the kids up, dressed and out the door for school and daycare and just like any other morning I running later than I had hoped. I had just one little thing left to do before we could leave, it is always our last step...I had to spray a bit of detangler and brush the tangles out of Paige's hair. It was as I was brushing that Paige uttered seven little words I will not soon forget.
Paige: Mom, that feels good on my itchies.
Me: What do you mean? What itchies? Why do you have itchies!!! Where are they?? (Clearly...I am starting to panic a little)
Paige: My head has itchies everywhere..here and here and here....Mom, will you brush it some more, but harder? It feels really good.
Okay, so clearly we had an issue that I needed to investigate. I immediately had Paige look down and I started to comb through the hair at the base of her neck. It took less than 10 seconds before I saw it. Paige had head lice. I felt a wave of anxiety kicking in...I was scanning my memory to recall any little tidbit I could about head lice. After all I was no stranger to it. Not only did I have it once as a child, but I worked in childcare for seven years and every year at least a few children would turn up with the impossible bug.
Now what? We were READY to leave. I had lunch plans... Could I just pretend I never saw it and go on about the day as intended and deal with it after work, I mean she got it from school afterall?? No, I knew that wasn't the answer. But what does one do in this situation? I started with a call to both my Mom and my best friend. They both confirmed that no, the kids could not go to school and daycare and it was just the beginning of a very LONG day. I spent the next half hour contacting her school nurse, her classroom teacher, the before and after school program and Quinn's daycare. It was humbling to call each person and tell them Paige had lice. I am certain she caught it at school, from who I will never know but surely someone along the way did not contact the necessary people and correct the problem.
Hopefully you have never encounter lice because it is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Well maybe I would...as long as they didn't share a cubby or coat hook near anyone in my family. So the very first step in getting rid of the buggers is to treat the hair with a product that will kill any live lice. Yes, I said LIVE lice. Isn't that disgusting?? The thought that there were tiny little bugs in my baby's hair biting her just pissed me off. So I loaded the kids in the car and off to Target we went. It was 8:00 in the morning and I was at Target, how awesome is that. I love Target!!! But not today, today Target turned out to be a bad, bad place.
As soon as we got there I took the kids to the bakery to select a donut since normally the kids eat at school and I kind of forgot to make it for them since we were staying home with all of the chaos. Donut in hand, we meandered over to the health care section to find the RID or Nix (lice removal products). I was pleased to see that they also carried a store brand box at half the price but grossed out that they were nearly sold out of all three varieties just 1 month into the school year. Ish...
Paige asked if they could go look at the toys, we had no reason not to, so we headed to the back of the store to build their Christmas wish list. Up and down the aisles we went looking at trucks, Lego's and anything that lit up or made noise. All of a sudden Paige yelled out in a panic that she had to go to the bathroom. I told her okay, we would go, I just had to get Quinn... (On a side note. Paige has to poop EVERY TIME we go to Target. Really, every. single. time. It must be the excitement of shopping at Target!)
So, back to Paige...she is yelling out to me to hurry that she has to go BAD so I scoop up Quinn and put him in the cart. He is mad that we are leaving so he is throwing a fit and trying to escape from the cart. I tell Paige that she can get a head start to the bathroom since she knows where it is to which she yells back at me "I can't!". I ask her if she would rather I put her in the cart and rush her to the bathroom but she tells me that won't work either. It as this moment that I realize she is walking as fast as she can while breathing quite heavily. She sounded a bit like a woman in labor and in addition she was on the verge of tears. I tell her to just head up to the front of the store to use the main bathroom, it would be the closest and while she went to the bathroom I would pay for our things. She was good with that plan and I watched as she did the penguin march into the bathroom.
I stood in line to pay keeping on eye on the bathroom waiting for her return, but it was taking longer than it should have. I was getting a bit anxious and the cashier for my line was taking her sweet 'ol time checking the lady in front of me out. As I again looked over at the restroom door on the lookout for Paige I saw a woman walk out, she had a look that told me immediately that she was looking for me. I watched as her eyes scanned the check out lanes and as soon as they got to me there was an immediate look that came across her face, I was the person she was looking for. She asked if I was Paige's mom and told me that Paige needed my help really bad. I thanked her and asked her to tell Paige that I would be there in a minute...or thirty if the darn cashier didn't pick up the pace. I was amazed that the cashier couldn't understand the desperation of my situation, Paige needed me now and there was no time to chit chat! I finally made it to the bathroom and left our bags in the cart out in the hall and pulled Quinn out to go with me.
The second my nose hit the air in that bathroom I knew it was going to be bad. I called out to Paige asking her which stall she was in and quickly realized we were the only ones in the bathroom...whew! Paige opened the stall she was in and there she stood, pants and underwear around her ankles. Poop everywhere and a toilet so full of toilet paper it stuck out above the seat. I stood there for a moment like a deer in headlights...where do we start?? Paige felt so bad and was sad that her clothes were dirty, I told her not to worry that everything would be just fine. Step number one was to flush that toilet. I was so afraid, our situation was bad enough as it was but what if that toilet overflowed? It was a real possibility! I held my breath, said a prayer and pushed the little black button. Whoosh. Down it went! Woo hoo!
Next we had to change locations, the single stall simply would not do for what needed to be done next. I made sure the bathroom was still empty and had Paige shuffle across the bathroom with her pants around her ankles into the handicapped stall so we could all fit. There I stripped her down, tossed the underwear and went through 15 or so wet paper towels to get her clean enough that we could go home. The only remaining problem was that the waistband of her pants also had poop on it. I thought about buying her a new pair to wear home, we were at Target after all...but that would mean leaving my 5 year old alone in the bathroom naked and everything about that just seemed wrong. So I did what I had to do...I washed her pants in the sink. So gross and unsanitary I know. But what else could I do?? I made sure to make my rounds to the sink only when the other shoppers had finished their business as not to freak any of them out and then I rinsed the sink well with soap and water when I was done. I then dried them the best I could with paper towels and off we went...I got into the car, looked at the clock and sighed. It was only 8:40 AM. Calgon, take me away!!!!
When we got back to the house I immediately treated both her hair and mine (just in case) and then we showered. I spent the next 3 hours hunkered over the bathroom counter staring nearly cross eyed at Paige's scalp. One by one pulling nit after nit from her hair. Every time I would look away to allow my eyes to refocus, I would look again and find more. There were just so many eggs, what a disgusting bug. My sweet Paige was so, so patient. She laid quietly playing with her Lego's singing songs and chatting away with me about school and her brother and her friends. It was nice spending that time with her, good thing we enjoy each others company because there was a lot more time to be spent over the next two weeks looking for bugs! Pretty soon both of us had had enough, she needed to get up and move and my back was killing me. Quinn also was in dire need of some attention, he had been given run of the house for the past 3 hours and he really did a number on both the bedroom and toy room.
The next step was to wash everything I could and bag up everything I couldn't. I spent the next hour bagging up all of the pillows and rugs, stuffed animals and plush toys to store in the garage for a couple of weeks. Then I pulled all of the bedding in the house along with all blankets, towels and every piece of dirty laundry I could find and loaded the car. The kids and I were off for a fun filled afternoon at the laundry mat where I would spend a total of 5 hours washing, drying, sorting and folding. By the time I was able to head home we were all exhausted. Paige and Quinn were so good, they had so much fun running around and pushing buttons on the machines. We were pretty much the only ones there so they were able to run around and play. In between loads we took Quinn to get his hair cut short as to keep him from catching lice and went to Walmart to buy more treatment for Paige's hair.
At the end of the day the worst part was over. My house was really clean and I had developed a new found fear of ever bringing this bug back into my home. It took a good two weeks before I finally stopped finding eggs in Paige's hair. I had to be diligent about checking every last strand of her hair each and every day. We also incorporated bi-weekly olive oil treatments. A sure fire way to kill the bugs while adding a lustorous shine to your hair!
I never thought I would see a day that consisted of Headlice, Cleaning up poop in a public place, Walmart and a Laundromat. Undelieveable. Oh, by the way. There are actually people who pick out eggs form headlice as a profession to the tune of $90 per hour. If Paige would have hired me, I would have made nearly $2,000...you do the math :)
