Weekly Whine: Lice

I hate lice.

I mean, I'm sure everyone hates lice, but as a woman who is the mother of two little girls, I really, really hate them. I would say that it is one of the worst things you can get after all the life-threatening stuff.

First of all, there's a huge social stigma attached to lice. If you have them, your kids can't be in school or daycare, you can't go on play dates, you can't tell anyone about it or talk about it (unless you have a big mouth like I do). If there weren't such a social stigma attached to it, I would've figured out my daughter had it much sooner, since her best friend's mom might've actually told me about it. (Or vice versa.)

And once you have it, it is impossible to get rid of if you have little girls who value not being bald. The shampoo? Useless. It basically says on the bottle that it's useless. It says that using the shampoo doesn't actually work, and in order to get rid of the lice, you must pluck them out one at a time from your daughters hair. You can imagine this is a really fun and easy task with a three-year-old.

When my girls had it, I cut their hair as short as I dared. My youngest definitely looked like a boy, and asked me tearfully, "will my hair grow back?" My older daughter cut her hair fairly short (it was buzzed in the back), but her hair is so thick that it was still really hard to comb it out. It was torture.

And I got it too. Yes, I admit it. I cuddle too much with my girls. And you can imagine that it was super fun trying to comb out my own thick, curly hair. I finally had to ask my husband to do it. Sexy.

I tried the following: the shampoo, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, hand lotion, a blow dryer. I lay overnight with a plastic bag on my head. (I heard about a little girl who suffocated during a lice treatment.) I came so close to getting out a razor and shaving all three of us bald.

Finally, after a month, at the point at which the girls would automatically burst into tears every time I got out the lice comb, I went to a service that combed out our hair for us for three hours and got rid of it. All for the low low price of $800.

And did the insurance cover it? Excuse me while I laugh.

Here's a thought: Lice is a health issue so why don't they actually make a treatment that works, or else make insurance cover some sort of professional treatment? I mean, I assume I wouldn't have to pay for my own scabies medication.