And Sugar We’re Going Down Swinging

Last week on Tuesday I took the girls to the park after I got home from work. While we were there Ellie asked me to fix her ponytail and as I was straightening it I noticed a bug in her hair. Since two girls at the babysitter’s had lice the week before I immediately dragged my kids home for a head check. Sure enough both of them had lice and as I found out later that evening they had shared it with me too.

We went to the pharmacy and bought all the lice removal paraphernalia which all told cost me close to $100 and headed back home. I immediately stripped beds and started doing laundry then shampooed SB’s hair. Three hours later she was shampooed and combed through as thoroughly as I could. It was 10:00 when I put her to bed although the poor thing had been falling asleep with her head on my knee while I picked bugs from her scalp. Then I started over on PK who finally got put to bed at 2:00am. During one of her potty breaks I did some more searching on the Internet and found advice suggesting that covering the hair once it was cleaned would help prevent reinfestation from the rest of the house. Taking that to heart I tied a plastic bag over PK’s hair before tucking her in.

At that point I was too exhausted to worry about what was creeping through my hair and I collapsed. 6 hours of sleep later I got up and deloused the living room so the girls would have a safe place to play. I also ran out again to pick up some shower caps since they weren’t fond of the crinkly bags from the grocery store. Then I attacked my own head. Let me just say “EWWWW”.

During this whole time I was also laundering everything that wasn’t nailed down but I didn’t feel as though I was making any progress. That feeling intensified when late in the afternoon I began combing through the PK’s hair again and found even more little buggies. I then had to tear off everything from their beds again and rewash the bedding.

The next morning the whole process repeated itself but this time both girls had buggies. Unfortunately Thursday was also the day of the long awaited appointment for SB with the psychiatrist. I decided to go anyway. I know, I’m horrible. I couldn’t wait three more months though. I dropped PK at my mom’s where she was banished to the back yard (at least she was able to swim in their pool) while SB and I trekked downtown to Children’s Memorial.

Now, not to mingle stories here but in order to get a real feel for my week I’m going to give the rundown of how that appointment went. We’d been referred by the child/family psychologist that I’d been taking her to in the spring when she felt she couldn’t help us anymore. We were supposed to get an evaluation for ADHD and OCD. We spent an hour talking to a very nice woman doctor about the insanity that characterizes life with SB and at the end of the appointment I walked away with more questions than answers. According to the doctor SB is “interesting” and she’s going to “think about this” some more. Apparently she’s not exactly ADHD nor is she quite OCD. As a matter of fact she seems like she might have Asperger’s (a high-functioning disorder on the autistic spectrum) but that doesn’t fit completely either. We set up another appointment for next month.

We finally got back to the p’s house about 4 hours after we’d left. My mom generously came outside to pick through my hair and make sure all the bugs were gone since I couldn’t see for myself. Once I was pronounced clean I felt an enormous amount of relief. Then I went through my middlest sister’s hair since she’d been around my kids quite a bit while the sitter was on vacation. To my delight she had not a trace of lice anywhere.

That night when we got home I combed through the girls’ hair again just to reassure myself and although they were clean I still made them sleep in their shower caps. After they were in bed I got a phone call from my middlest sister informing me that she’d found lice in our littlest sister’s hair. The littlest sister refused an offer to come to my house and have me help her deal with the problem. In fact, she refused to speak with me at all. It was during that phone call that I learned that our sister-in-law, who we’d visited two weeks earlier, had called to say that she and her daughters all had lice. She shared with my sister that she was not happy with me at all. It’s a good thing I’m used to being in disfavor with my family or this might have hurt. Oh wait, still did.

The next morning we did another comb through, one buggie for SB and none for PK. Lots and lots of nits though. Fortunately they were the hatched ones so not a concern. Another comb through that evening was uneventful. Saturday and Sunday passed peacefully with lots of combing and I finally finished washing everything. Last night I went to bed looking forward to the prospect of returning to work.

Then I talked to the sitter this morning. Some of the other parents had expressed their concern about my daughters returning to her house due to the lice situation. Now, my sitter is not a doormat. She is not the kind of person who lets others dictate how she will behave and she had told me last week that as long as the kids were lice free they could return on Monday. Those parents must have leaned very heavily on her because she, very apologetically, asked me to please keep the girls home until they’ve had their second shampoo treatment. Since the shampoo contains toxic chemicals you can’t administer it more than once every 7 days which means the kids don’t go back until Wednesday.

That was it. That was the final straw for me. I’m going to pat myself on the back a bit and say that I think I handled the commotion and garbage of the last week very well. I didn’t snap at anyone, I didn’t blame anyone or get mad at the world because my life happened to suck. I tried to see the humor in the situation and just plow through it. Being shunned this morning by some small-minded self-centered who-gives-a-damn-if-the-doctor-says-its-fine-make-the-single-mother-miss-more-work-so-there’s-no-chance-of-me-being-inconvenienced people just knocked me off my feet. I mean, I know these parents. I see them every day and we chat and are nice and I just never would have expected these people who know me to be so juvenile and petty. Not to mention that the other girls who had the outbreak first weren’t “required” by the other parents to stay out for a week.

So I called the only person who I knew would actually answer the phone and listen at 6:45am. My mommy. I cried and sobbed that it just wasn’t fair. Then she had to go to work so I called my daddy. I cried and sobbed that it just wasn’t fair. Then I made pancakes and hung out with the kids all day.

Yeah, I bounce back pretty quick most of the time. I spent my free time researching Asperger’s and trying to figure out what to do about my quirky little spy. Tomorrow my dad is going to work from my house so he can hang with the kids while I go to the office. When I get home I’ll shampoo the girls hair and Wednesday they’ll return to the sitter’s. It could all be worse I’m sure.

So this wasn’t funny, and it was long and kinda boring. I apologize. I’ll be funny next time. I hope.