4 Weeks Measured by the Lice

It's been 4 weeks. Our 'weekend emergency placement' that has lasted 4 weeks. And I know it has been 4 weeks because I can keep track by the amount of times that I have treated for lice. 3.5 times. I say a half because I washed all the sheets, all the bedding, put all the stuffed animals into a sealed garbage bag but ran out of steam by the end of the day to do the hair treatment. I just couldn't do another 2 hours of combing through hair that night. And found it lost priority the next day and the next. I am just pooped of the whole situation.

I did some research instead and found that maybe this whole lice thing is an urban legend. A myth. Not that they are fake, but that you don't need to vacuum and do linens and all the other house cleaning that distracts from the real problem - the head. Which is the part that I lost steam for. Ooooops.

Apparently, from what I can gather, is lice like your head. Not like fleas that bounce all over the place. But lice love head blood and warmth. So there is no reason for them to leave the head unless they are dead or injured or literally need to just take a gander and walk across one person's head to another person's head during a hug or a secret or any other numerous things why 2nd grade girls would have their heads together.

If you make your head smell like something other than a head, the lice pack up their bags and leave. Thinking that there is no food around. I got my hands on some tea tree mint shampoo which is rumored to be something that lice do not like. They'll starve themselves or go find someone else to infest.

They can only live without eating for 24 hours. And the reason that they come back and back again after a treatment is the stragglers. The lice shampoo does kills eggs, but only the eggs that have started to hatch. Not the just laid ones. That are so super tiny. Tinier than what can be seen without a magnifying glass. Those are the ones that hatch later and do a re-infestation. It's a wreck. But made me feel confident that they are not just hanging out on pillows or sheets, waiting for their dinner. That's too much of  chance to take when you could be dead within 24 hours of no food. While it's a good idea, it's better to treat the head than it is to drive yourself crazy doing loads of laundry and vacuuming couches and chairs. Which is a good idea to gather up any loose hairs that might have an egg attached to it, but it isn't going to be where you are going to find the lice.

Which brings me to my last little bit of advice to myself that we will see if I have the energy to take. The hard core stuff that you get from the store can only be used on the head every 7-10 days due to being so rough on the hair and the skin of the scalp. So the next idea is to do the mayonnaise thing. That suffocates them. Every three days to catch the stragglers. My feet hurt at the thought of standing over another head for another hour, combing out hair.