every once in a while i find a small toy, some lego, rubbish or craft supplies in my pocket that i've accidentally taken home from work. the other day i discovered something else i'd brought home-- lice!! we've had sooo many kids with lice this year!
LICE FACTS:
- you CAN'T get them from sharing hats, etc. basically the only way the are transferred is thru head to head contact (they don't fly or jump, just crawl)
- lice DON'T just like dirty hair. they prefer clean hair (i think it makes it easier for them to crawl on if its not greasy) but don't really discriminate. clean, dirty, long, short- as long as its a nice warm human scalp to live on
-they DO NOT breed or live on clothing, bedding, furniture, carpets etc. ONLY on human heads
i figure the only possible way that i got them from a child that was scratching the back of his neck for 2 days. both me and another staff tried to check for lice but the child wouldn't sit still and he had hair colour that made lice and nits VERY hard to spot. we figured it might be a heat related rash or something anyway so we gave up. it probably was lice. he was the only child i was even close to having head to head contact with. i would lay on a pillow next to his mattress at rest time and try to settle him. there's a slim possibility that 1 louse wandered from his head across the pillow and onto me. that's the ONLY time i've even had my head close to a child's.
fortunately as an adult i think its much easier to get rid of the lice than on a child who is going to continue to play in close contact with peers repeatedly. i bought a lice comb the other nite (after 2 days of scratching my neck and behind my ears, having zac check me 3 times and saying he didn't think i had lice and one of my co-workers saying it would be pretty much impossible to get lice from one of the children and i probably just had something else making me itchy). i spent 30 minutes combing thru my hair with conditioner and found a few lice. i repeated it again the next morning and next nite and again tonite. i haven't found any more since yesterday morning so i think i'm ok. they no longer say its necessary to wash bedding and clothing so that's a lot less work to do. i didn't get any of the chemical treatments either. there's some natural ones (with tea tree, lavender and other oils that lice don't like) that you can use with the combs but i just used regular conditioner and that seemed to do the job fine (i did start adding tea tree oil to the conditioner to help discourage them from wanting to live on me and i'll probably make a tea tree rinse to use when i wash my hair to help prevent it again).
i don't lay down on a pillow anymore at rest time either (and i put another LARGE highlighted note in the parent communication book reminding parents to check their kids regulary for lice).
2 comments:
when I was in first year university, a girl in my dorm had lice and her roommate (who was a friend of mine and didn't even LIKE the lice girl-- let alone have head to head contact with her) contracted lice... so I am not so sure about your "facts" although I've heard that lice is more difficult to catch than most people think... anyway, good luck with that :D
lice have hooked feet that they use to walk on hair. it makes it difficult to walk on anything else. i'm sure they do crawl on things and its possible to get them thru non-head to head contact (that's how i got em). like you said- its more difficult to catch than most people think.
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