Although we could easily have had this new experience in the States, we are having it here instead. Anna Catherine had been itching her head like crazy every time she took her pony tail out after school. I didn’t think a whole lot about it until it continued for a week or two and then Sunday at lunch she mentioned having red bumps on her neck too. That did it – I told her to let me look…you guessed it….lice! and lots of it! Gross! She was freaked out by the fact that there were bugs in her hair and little eggs clinging to her ‘crown of beauty’. Lunch was interrupted by a family head check revealing Nathan’s case of lice as well. The rest of the afternoon was spent de-lousing the house and heads. All the bed linens, jackets, brushes, hats, pillows, stuffed animals, towels had to be bagged up until I could wash them. Remember I have a mini washer / dryer combo so there was no way a comforter would even fit in the washer. This need led to the discovery that there are no ‘DYI launderettes’
around – that’s ‘laundromat’ in America. Everyone can’t possibly have their own washer/dryer could they? Go figure. But I did discover they have washerettes that will do it for you for 8 pounds or $16 a single comforter. Ouch. Needless to say our washer has been going all week trying to work through whatever could be crammed into it.
On to the heads…Nathan and AC had their heads doused in de-louse ointment for 8 hours. We then took the extra fine tooth ‘nit comb’ to their heads to try to strip the hair of the eggs. We get to repeat this process again on today in case we missed any. Isn’t that lucky for them?
Nathan sheepishly handed his teacher the note on Monday declaring his lice status to which she replied – “Oh no worries Pet, several kids in the class have had it lately.” Great! As it turns out lack of funds have stopped the “Nit Nurses’ from coming to schools with reported cases of lice to check the children and now health and safety laws prevent an adult from digging through a kid’s head. The best they can do now is periodically send a note home to parents that there have been reported lice cases and please check your kid. In other words…useless and keep the de-louse ointment near by because you’ll probably get it again since they obviously have no effective way to control it anymore.
We’ll chalk that up to new experiences and hope that we don’t become experts in lice.
around – that’s ‘laundromat’ in America. Everyone can’t possibly have their own washer/dryer could they? Go figure. But I did discover they have washerettes that will do it for you for 8 pounds or $16 a single comforter. Ouch. Needless to say our washer has been going all week trying to work through whatever could be crammed into it.On to the heads…Nathan and AC had their heads doused in de-louse ointment for 8 hours. We then took the extra fine tooth ‘nit comb’ to their heads to try to strip the hair of the eggs. We get to repeat this process again on today in case we missed any. Isn’t that lucky for them?
Nathan sheepishly handed his teacher the note on Monday declaring his lice status to which she replied – “Oh no worries Pet, several kids in the class have had it lately.” Great! As it turns out lack of funds have stopped the “Nit Nurses’ from coming to schools with reported cases of lice to check the children and now health and safety laws prevent an adult from digging through a kid’s head. The best they can do now is periodically send a note home to parents that there have been reported lice cases and please check your kid. In other words…useless and keep the de-louse ointment near by because you’ll probably get it again since they obviously have no effective way to control it anymore.
We’ll chalk that up to new experiences and hope that we don’t become experts in lice.
No comments:
Post a Comment