Creepy Crawlies

Tuesday 21 March 2017

I am not a fan of anything with more than four legs that creepy crawls so to sit down and write a piece about headlice is actually making me itchy but needs must!  I’m very vigilant about my children’s hair.  I check it weekly.  I spray their head’s daily going to school with a mixture of tea tree oil (which I use for every ailment under the sun) and water.  Any time a text comes through from school to say there is an outbreak, I jump on it and so far after four years of primary school, we’ve managed to escape.  Until now. More and more my daughter is coming home with other children’s bows and hair bobbins in her hair and I didn’t give it too much thought, other than that she always seems to have something belonging to somebody else.  But it was my son who started to scratch first and complain of being itchy.  I asked where he was itchy and as soon as he said behind his ears, I knew that I would find something.  A thorough check revealed one crawler and a few eggs and sure enough when I checked Lady Jane’s, there was another crawler.  And my skin has been crawling since.

Fine combs, Lyclear, and hours of pain staking brushing of all five family heads later and all evidence of headlice, or nits, has been eradicated.  I was a Mom with a vendetta but even as I was removing eggs, I was aware that the battle is only half over and that I will need to be meticulous in keeping on top of them.  Head lice can survive on the human head for around 30 days. They generally die within 24 hours of being removed from the head. A mammy (I’m calling her this to try make her less yuckie and me less disturbed by her presence) lays 3 to 5 eggs a day. These hatch in 7 to 10 days and it takes them another 7 to 10 days to mature and lay their own eggs. It’s a vicious circle.

I’m not going to lie, I was mortified.  I don’t know if that’s a by-product of the stigma I felt attached to headlice as a child.  I remember my mother painstaking treating our hair. Whether she found anything or not, she never said, but I always thought of headlice as dirty.  Now I know that’s not the case, and it’s just one of those unfortunate side effects of being a kid, surrounded by lots of other kids, on a daily basis.  They cannot fly or jump or swim, they simply take a stroll from one head to the next.  They also only affect humans, so I can’t even blame the poor pooch.

I’m learning lots of interesting facts I didn’t necessarily want to know.  For example: Itching is not because they bite, rather it’s an allergic reaction to having them present, but it can remain even after all traces are gone.  The HSE stress the importance of informing the school, and treating your child’s hair immediately, but only once lice are found, rather than “just in case”. Giving my son a buzz cut, has also taught me that I didn’t miss my calling as a hairdresser.

http://www.hse.ie/eng/health/az/H/Head-lice/ for more information