The unexpected intruder.....lice!

It was worse than I thought.
When Abby came into our bathroom that morning, I got a better look at her head, and could see multiple big louse scrambling for cover on the top of her head!!
When you see the big bugs...you know that they've been festering for awhile.
Long enough for the original pest to get in her hair and lay some eggs, and for those eggs to hatch and produce tiny, little bugs.
For information on how long the life cycle of lice are, read here.

I checked our other children and amazingly, found nothing in either the 2 boys, my husband, and Ashlyn.
I found about 4 nits in Lexi's hair.
My husband assured me that he could see nothing in my hair.
(This was an enormous relief to me as I had just gotten home from staying my 96 year old grandmother's apartment and sleeping on her bed, not to mention my daily visits with her in the nursing home!)
I found it astounding that with all the places Abby had been in the house (on sister's beds, in the van, laying on Mommy's pillow, laying on Grandma's bed earlier in the week, on my lap) that more of the household wasn't infested.
God's mercy.

I called our pediatrician for advice as soon as I knew they were open.
I needed confirmation that what I was seeing was what I thought it was!
Instead, he preferred I not bring Abby in, but that we just treat the whole family.
The nurse recommended treating with "Cetaphil: Gentle Skin Cleanser" instead of the very chemically treatments like "Rid" or "Nix."
For information on how this works, read here and here.
I had also heard from a missionary friend of mine that Tea Tree Oil shampoo worked to get rid of lice as well.
So I ran out and stocked up on the Cetaphil, nit combs, and tea tree oil shampoo.
In the meantime, my husband turned himself into the Laundry Monster.
We had the children strip off all the bedding on their beds and he started piling everything into the dryer for 10 minutes, then the washing machine for cleaning.
The piles were enormous.
All the stuffed animals and pillow pets got shoved into air tight garbage bags where they would stay for 2 weeks.
By the time I got back from the stores with our treatments, he had a good start on all that.

These became our best friends for the next 48 hours.

All 8 of us had to be treated and our hair combed through. 

It took me two hours on Abby's hair alone!

I cut Abby and Aryn's hair into cute little bobs!

I think we finally had everyone shampooed and one treatment done by 10 pm that night.

My mother-in-law had also been over for a couple hours to help us with vacuuming, and the other things that still had to go on.  She also took some laundry home with her to do as well!!

On Friday morning, I checked everyone again, and retreated.

This time, I found some live bugs in Aryn's hair and several nits.

Abby had just a few nits, and I found a couple more in Lexi's thick carpet-like red hair!

We treated and shampooed every day until Saturday.

I checked everybody's head twice a day, and the laundry looked like this:

I had already prepped the children that if I found one nit in anybody's hair, that person would have to stay home from church with me on Sunday.

Mercifully, we were all clear.

All 8 of us.

And we had decided (my husband, our youth pastor, and myself) that if everyone was still clear on Monday morning, we would be going to summer camp as well.

It worked out quite nicely that as we washed up every stitch of clothing that had been laying around and possibly in contact with those infested, I would just fold and pack into bags for camp.

We just had to get the all clear from the camp.

But I couldn't get them to answer the phone.......

The unexpected intruder

Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried!
The very. same. evening I flew back home to my sweet family from Philadelphia we ended up in a mess!
A gut-wrenching, drop me to my knees, begging God for mercy, mess!
Not only was I mentally and physically tired from my amazing journey to unexpectedly visit my grandmother, but I had only 4 days to get myself and 3 children completely packed for a week at summer church camp 4 hours from our home.
I tend to be a bit OCD about the packing thing, so I was trying to get myself mentally organized for the task at hand.
There was much hugging and kissing at the airport and everyone wanted to cram all around me in the van during our ride home.
Abby even had to sit on my lap.
It was all very sweet.
We had so much fun unpacking all the goodies I had brought home, and there was much story telling all around.
Then, about 8:30 or 9:00 pm, Abby comes to me quietly in the kitchen and she says rather off-handedly, "Mom, my head has been itching a lot lately."

When she said that to me, I practically froze in horror where I was standing.
Somehow, I knew this was my worst nightmare come true!

You see, nearly 19 years ago, I was working in a group home for abused and neglected girls in Manchester, NH as a child care worker.
We had been through some staffing turnovers, and it was down to just myself and two other amazing child care workers caring for 10-12 girls by ourselves.
As God had predetermined, while we were short staffed, we had an epidemic of lice come through brought back to the home by one of the girls who had been home with her biological mother for awhile.  It was a nightmare for us.
Come to find out only 1 or 2 of the girls did not have it.
The amount of work we had to do to rid the home of this was just staggering and exhausting!
It was a couple months before we stopped getting calls from the school that one of the girls still had a nit in her hair!
As a young mother, I would relive that experience and try to think ahead to how I would handle a situation like that if it ever occurred in my own home.

No one could have prepared me for Abby coming to me that evening.
I just knew what it was.
I immediately began looking around her ears and at the nape of her neck, and sure enough, I immediately found 2 nits and one tiny louse just behind her ear.

I crumbled.
Literally.
It wasn't pretty.
I had to go and sit on the edge of my bathtub because I was so nauseous and overwhelmed with what that meant for our family for the next 72 hours.
I didn't want to think about it.
I was so mad!!
Why now!!
Why couldn't we have come home from camp with it!!  Why not two years ago?  I was flying all through these other scenarios of when it would have been better timing!
I was so upset about what just slammed in my face that I frightened my children.
Poor Abby became hysterical because she thought this might make her die.
She couldn't understand why I was so distraught.

I had to pull myself together.
My husband was a little baffled at my response, but he was my hero!
This is what he said very gently to me:  "Whatever this means, we'll get through it together."
That was just the voice of God whispering grace to me in that moment.

I wish I could've been stronger.
I wish I hadn't crumbled.
I wish I could've seen the big picture in that moment.
I wish I could've had some big spiritual thought fill my tired brain.
Instead, I was very human.

At that moment I knew I needed help.
God's Divine help.
So, I stood in the hallway with Abby and Ashlyn (who were crying) and we prayed together that the Lord would help us get through this.
And I told my husband that he would have to call in to work the next day and let them know he couldn't come to work until we knew he was clear of lice.
I went to bed and hardly slept that night knowing what was ahead the next day, yet being uncertain how this would affect the plans we had had since the beginning of the year for the children to attend summer church camp that was to begin in only 5 days!!