Really Useful Information I Hope You Never Need

Myth- 5 to 11 million children (ages 3-12) get lice infestations every year.
Fact - 6 to 12 million children (ages 3-12) get lice infestations every year. ;)
Fact - This is a conservative estimate because many cases are self-treated and unreported.
Myth- Lice can jump from person to person.
Fact - Lice can't jump, but they can crawl fast. Transmission usually requires super close contact.
Fact - Lice prefer clean heads. Should make one feel better, but it doesn't.
Fact - Lice rarely live off a human host for longer than 24-48 hours.

Our Celebrity Fun Run Race For the Cure is still in the planning stages, but meanwhile....
if sometime you find yourself needing to treat someone with lice or nits or both, here is some useful info.

Day One: Don't panic. Really. It's going to be okay and one day you will look back on this and laugh. Go to drug store and buy Rid/Nix Kit. Buy extra supplies (shampoo/gel/nit removal combs) while you are at it because you don't want to have to go back to the store in the middle of treatment because you don't have enough. Also, pick up alligator clips and rubber bands for sectioning hair if not on hand at home.


Apply shampoo to dry hair and leave on for 10 minutes. Whilst waiting, trash all pillows and strip all beds. Begin the first of dozens (if not hundreds) of loads of laundry. After the ten minutes of pesticide hair immersion, wash out shampoo. This is supposed to kill all live lice. It doesn't. Apply gel from kit. Immediately begin 4 plus hours of literal nit picking from hair. Make yourselves comfortable next to a very good light source and a flowing water source (i.e., kitchen or bathroom sink.) If you have a natural spring outside in sunlight, that would be ideal. It's difficult to pick a place to start, but the top front works well. Comb through very small section at least three times starting as close to the scalp as you can get. (When lice feed, they attach to the scalp....those mean little buggers.) Rinse comb between sweeps. Nits are super-glued to the hair shaft. Fingernails are useful in scraping off the eggs. Section off cleaned strands with elastic bands and/or alligator clips. Hang in there and just keep combing. You might think you can't do this. You might say, "I can't beat lice. Lice has been around for a thousand years. I was a fool to think I could beat it." But you can. Just keep combing. After surviving several hours of this you will want to go to bed, or at least begin treatment on next infested head, but take time to dry hair with hair dryer because a study at the University of Utah (go Utes!) showed that dry, hot air eradicates head lice. That makes three treatments in one night....chemical, mechanical, and thermodynamic. Effective, no? Yes, and no.


Vacuum and remake beds with clean sheets and use towels as pillows which can easily be washed for the next several days.

Go to bed at 5:00 AM, Get up at 6 AM.

(You are not to use the Rid/Nix Shampoo again until day seven. This is a pesticide we are talking about. Newly hatched lice cannot lay eggs until they are 10 days old. So, if you missed any nits and they hatch, they should get killed with the second round of chemical treatment before they can reproduce. Once you get used to spotting the lice, you get an eye for it. Note: they look different depending on their age. It is next to impossible to remove all the nits. The following days are to remove newly hatched critters and any remaining nits.)


Day Two:  Keep kids home.  This is for two reasons--they could still be harboring fugitives and it is very likely classmates are contagious. If timing did not allow on day one, notify school and contacts ASAP so inspections can begin.  Assess how lice made debut into family. You want everyone else in need to be treated so that reinfestation does not occur. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors, tell your neighbor's friends. Find out there was an epidemic and you weren't alerted.  Keep kids home to keep them safe. Insist school policy changes so that classroom coats, jackets and backpacks are kept separate and not dumped together into bins.
Reconsider homeschooling. 
Okay, we are still on day two. This is a spa day. You worked hard on day one. Things should look good. Time to pull double duty. Cover hair with olive oil or mayo, put on shower cap. I recommend Mayo. You will never want to eat it again. Leave for the day. (We are supposedly suffocating any remaining lice and making it so any remaining nits will slide right off the hair shaft.)

Vacuum everywhere....again. Wash everything. Pack up soft toys and non washable fabrics in garbage bags to be sealed up for a few weeks in the garage. (If you didn't take care of that already on day one.)

In mid-afternoon, begin second mechanical removal of any possible remaining lice by combing out oil/mayo or conditioner from first day comb out procedure. Use a hair dryer to dry hair.

Hair will be luxuriously shiny and hopefully lice free. But we are going to continue treating.

Day Three: You should not be seeing any lice or nits, but we are just going to keep on treating until day seven (seven is a magic number) because after the trauma of day one we cannot be too careful. It only takes one missed louse or viable nit to begin a huge outbreak.
Add three tablespoons of salt to a small bottle of shower gel. Saturate the hair and scalp. Leave in for 30 minutes before rinsing out. This is also supposed to kill lice. Warning: the salt stings the lice bites and can be quite painful to a child who has had a bigger infestation. Other children might not be bothered at all by it. This is a way to denote the severity.

Day Four: Hair looks clear. Keep on treating. Wash hair with baking soda paste and rinse with vinegar/water. Deep condition and blow dry.

Day Five: Repeat and Inspect. Request different seat for child on bus if you don't take on the homeschooling option.

Day Six: Repeat and Inspect.

Day Seven: Follow up with final Rid/Nix Shampoo Treatment. Inspect. Reintroduce pillows.

Day Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve.... on to day one hundred to infinity: Inspect head.  Use tea tree oil topically prophylactically.



Resume sleeping at night.