"Mice" in our hair

Special non-toxic but parasite-killing shampoo: $14

Brand-new "only the consumer may remove this tag" bed pillows: $40 (on sale)

Getting to call your husband in Argentina to tell him that the children have lice (and he does too)

Priceless

"Hello Madame? Yes, this is Elise at the front desk of the school. Yes, Juju has been sent to me by the teacher because she has (whispers) lice. You can come get her, please? She cannot stay in school and needs special treatment."

Holy shit.

Lice? My daughter has lice?

A thousand thoughts run through my head: How could this happen? What does it mean? What the hell is lice? Where did they get it? But my kids are so clean! They wear clean clothes! We live in the suburbs! Do I have to shave their heads? Do I have to shave my own?  OMG DO I HAVE LICE ON ME RIGHT NOW? 

Yes.

Of course I do. Little Juju crawls into bed with us every night around 4am. She sleeps on my pillow, steals all the covers and snuggles under my arm. If she has lice, I certainly do too. And if I have it, he has it. That him that I just put on an airplane to Argentina this morning. The guy who will be hours from civilization for the next 10 days.

Every single part of my body starts to itch.

Leave work and call the doctor. Yes they can see us in an hour. Call Cassandre's school. "Yes Madame, thank you for calling. The other school called, we have checked Cassandre's hair and found that she has nits. We have removed her from class. Please not to worry, everyone seems to have it right now. Please come and take her home. "

Gah, gah and GAH.

Pick up Cassandre first. She is sitting in the hallway looking forlorn and as soon as we leave the building she bursts into tears. "When the kids found out I have lice they were like 'ew! keep away! keep away!'" We talk about how it's not her fault. How she did nothing to bring this on. Skin crawling, I tell her (and myself) that this is going to be just fine. This is not serious. No one is going to die. Except maybe me from being grossed out. But I'll save that for later. 

Juju is also sitting on a chair in the hallway, near the receptionist. The receptionist is very kind, she says not to worry that everyone seems to have "it" these days. Juju doesn't really understand what it means to have "mice" in her hair but she's very glad that I'm picking her up from school. She is happy and in a good mood.

At the doctor's office we learn about lice. Happily the doctor doesn't feel compelled to put on a gas mask and rubber gloves. We are not lepers, although we are segregated from the other patients, tucked away in the "rash room." Yes, everyone gets it. Yes it's a pain to treat. The good news is that you don't have to shave their heads anymore (apparently this has been true for such a long time that it shows everyone how old I am for thinking of it, which is nice). The better news is that you don't need to wash their hair with tar shampoo or pesticides. You can get rid of it with ordinary Cetaphil. While this has been Remedy #2 (in case of failure) for some time, Recent studies have shown it to be as effective as pesticide shampoos - which is great since no one really wants to put pesticide on their kids. I mean how ironic is that, we spend all this money on organic fruit just to rub poison directly into their scalps? Non-toxic sounded good and was my choice for Remedy #1.

The bad news is that you have to completely clean your house: bedding, towels, all clothes worn during the last three days. Anything that can't be washed has to be closed up tight in plastic bags for two weeks. Like pillows, coats, hats and stuffed animals. STUFFED ANIMALS? Oh sweet lord. My girls have the equivalent of an entire animal kingdom in their room. Enough animals to fill the San Francisco Zoo (without the tigers, of course). We have dozens, maybe hundreds? of them. This is going to be fun.  

We leave the doctor and go to the mall to buy pillows and only pillows. No cute shoes on sale at Macys. No cute clothes for girls on sale at The Gap. Not even ice cream from Haagan Daz. We're on a mission. 

Then we go to the grocery store/pharmacy and buy the special non-toxic but lice killing cleanser. And some dinner.

At home we strip the bedrooms and fill up the bags. The girls are great, helpful even. Despite the fact that live bugs are crawling all over their heads. Juju was not thrilled that her stuffed animals had to go live in a bag for a while but she got over it.

I was a fury of cleaning.

After the first load (of five) of laundry was in, I started on the girls. After reading the EIGHT pages of instructions (three from the doctor, five from the school which of course totally contradicted each other) I was ready to attack the wretched creatures (the bugs, not the children). In case you have to do it yourself, I've written this as instructions for you. Believe me, my instructions are about a thousand times clearer than any you're going to get if you (knock on wood) have to go through this. 

• Brush hair with girls' awful lice-contaminated hairbrushes (boil these later) to get rid of the tangles and hopefully prevent future sobbing that would come from pulling hair.
• Saturate dry hair with non-toxic yet pest-killing yet gentle enough for your face cleanser. When I say saturate, I mean all the way, baby. The soap needs to permeate to the roots (the eggs are 1/4" off the scalp attached to the hair follicles). The hair should look and feel wet.
• Let soap marinate in the hair for a good couple of minutes.
• Put on cartoons so the kids don't notice you combing their hair for an hour (they will quickly become hypnotized, unless you didn't get the tangles out, then they will become traumatized).
• Take the larger of two dangerous looking RID-branded lice combs and begin the combing process.
• Using a grid pattern sanctioned by the US military, comb each section in turn.
• Comb through the soapy hair, wipe foam with "mice" and eggs on a towel, overcome desire to retch when you see actual evidence of lice, comb again.
• Don't be stingy on the temples and the nape of the neck because that's where the little bastards thrive.
• When you think you're done, pick up the smaller and only slightly less lethal looking comb and repeat the grid pattern.
• Blow the hair dry. 
• That's right, you're drying the soap into the hair. This is the magic that suffocates the lice.
• Create some kind of code word your kids can use to tell when you're about to melt their skin off with the blow dryer. "Hot!" worked for us. The blow drying process will take forever because you are drying soap and not water. No, I don't know why it takes longer, but it does.
• Saying to yourself (in your head, so as to not upset the children) "Die! Die! You dirty bastards! Take that! And that!" may make the time go by a little faster.
• Make the bed with hot from the dryer clean sheets and newly purchased bed pillows.
• Put the kids in your bed, because their sheets are still in the laundry and he is out of town and they are begging to sleep with you. Try to forget that this is how they gave you lice in the first place.

Time to disinfect myself. Luckily my hair is super short and the process went a lot faster. The lice comb didn't actually drag out much (besides hair - ow) that I could see, but I'm sure there was probably something in there. Bastards. After I was done drying my hair it was so kinked out I looked like Billy Idol.

The whole hazmat process took a good six or seven hours, between doing the laundry, isolating the stuffed animals and treating/combing everyone's hair. Each kid's hair took over an hour at least.

The next day the girls went back to school with a doctor's note. The note not being good enough (and no, I don't blame the school for being cautious), each girl had to go to the office so someone wearing latex gloves could pick through their hair. Juju did her check up alone (with me), but there were two other girls with Cassandre, which made her feel about a million times better. Especially once the school pronounced her "lice-free."

We will have to repeat the hair treatments once a week for the next two weeks to be sure we got them all, especially since the lice is so rampant at both schools.

But at least the itching has stopped.