This not that. Or that. This. OR Spotting Lice Eggs aka Nits

It took me a while to figure it out. It’s amazing the amount of types of debris that can be found on a human head. We’ve killed thousands of nits and still get surprised sometimes (glitter, fingernail clippings, cookie pieces, etc). But it can be done.  You can learn to tell the difference from lice egg and a potato chip crumb too.

Nits can be very tricky to spot when the insect is new to the head and there isn’t much to see yet. So if at first you don’t succeed, try again tomorrow instead of saying “Well, I checked.  That’s it.” They have an incubation phase of about  7 to 10 days. The female lays around 3 to 5 eggs at a pop. Remember that you have a couple of days before they hatch and are populating your head with real crawling bloodsucking head lice. Better to be absolutely sure that they aren’t there and get them and their mother beast before they cause an infestation.

Like so many things in life, lice eggs are not all the same. They tend to blend up against the follicle and that hair follicle can vary in color, as do the eggs. So don’t count on them looking exactly like the pictures that you have googled (although you can admire the moxy of the photographer willing to get that close to a louse ridden head). Diversity is the spice of lice.

Sorry about that. I digress….

Look for bumps on the hair shaft anywhere from next to the scalp to about an inch from the root of the hair follicle, then run your fingers over it. To me, it feels like the hair has a tiny, oval wart that it is part of the shaft, like a bump on a twig. I always try to show my clients how they feel to the touch. You can’t always count on good light but if you are unsure of the validity of your lice egg assumption, nothing  on a hair follicle that I have found yet that feels the same.

The nit is attached on one side of the strand with its own special egg glue. It can’t be moved without effort, usually pinching it with your fingernails and pulling it off. There is a good chance that the nit that is discovered past the 1/2  inch area is either old and dead or doomed as a useful cog in the lousy life cycle. Generally, it has to be close enough to the head for the newly hatched nymph to get to an immediate food source (I know. Ew.).  But we have seen way too many anomalies along this line to deem this as a certainty.  Hedge your bets. Treat is as if the nits are alive.  Caution goes a long way in lice hunting.

Here’s what they don’t look like. Dandruff. Sand. Cradle Cap. Sebaceous oil deposits. Paper. Mulch.

Dandruff moves when coerced. Sometimes if you scratch the area  on a dry scalp where there is a considerable amount of white debris, you can produce a little more. The hardest cases are the ones when you have an abundance of debris from dandruff because it becomes a  needle in the haystack scenario. This is when the whole touch thing really helps. Go slowly, look at each area closely and grab onto the suspicious characters. Don’t be afraid to yank it out for closer examination.

To me, sand resembles nits the most. If the person has been at the beach or a playground with a sandbox, approach with caution. Sweaty heads can make the little so-and-so’s stick but if you pull at it, it should slide off easily. Also, you will probably find more farther down the hair shaft where it just doesn’t make sense for a louse to lay multiple eggs. Still unsure? Try giving the head a good scrub with a liberal amount of shampoo and look again on a clean dry head. Nits don’t wash out easily, if at all.

Mulch is black and sharp. An obvious no upon examination. Paper flakes have sharper edges and are usually lighter. Also an easy no. Cradle cap is in patches against the head. Nits don’t roll that way.

So that leaves sebaceous oil deposits (for lack of better word…..I know that there must be an “official” one out there but so far I’m stumped). We especially find these on adolescents, even more so if they have been sweating.  I’ve had to plead with clients to please please believe me that this is not an egg. It can hang onto the strand stubbornly like it is an egg. It can be close to the right color when  are smaller. Sounds confusing? Yup.

Think of them as tiny balls of oil that have rolled up and solidified. A lice egg grows in conjunction with their brother and sister eggs from the same batch. The odds of eggs near each other being from the same source are very good, all about the same size and color. The sebaceous deposits are generally a light white which is (usually) the wrong color for a nit. They may vary in sizes and, most importantly, do not normally attach to just one side of the hair shaft. And they don’t have that whole wart feel thing going on. They slide down the shaft easily.  Think fatty. Again, ew.

One of the worst parts of having head lice in your home is the amount of uncertainty that is attached to it. If you still aren’t sure, get yourself a good lice comb, pretend what you think you may be seeing is really nits and start combing out whatever else may be on the head (see our instructional www.liceaunties.com/resources-instructions-for-removing-head-lice-and-nits.php). Can’t hurt. Could help.

For more information on our services please check us out at www.liceaunties.com.

Why?

People always ask us how we got into this business. Darned good question. And really not the same for any individual although we all seem to have of touch of OCD for lack of better ways of expressing it. We worry that we will miss something. We literally pick nits.

The women in our company are kind. We want to make people feel better. We also have a great sense of pride in our work. Human error happens and it takes a long time not to become devastated if something goes wrong. It makes us perfectionists.  It also make us good at assessing situations  and excellent communicators. We have to be crystal clear about what we can do, what we guarantee and how the client needs to be responsible in the situation to create a safe place for themselves against a recurrence. In other words, we cover our behinds as much as humanly possible from being an error because failing to stop the lice feels too bad. We charge them money.  Failure is unacceptable.  But we are human and humans aren’t perfect…..See? It is OCD stew.

You get used to it. It is part of life. Just like we get used to being “on call.” Instead of waiting around the treatment center all day, we come in for scheduled appointments. Which means that one day can be very very quiet and then next day we are working on a family of three with another one lined up right behind them. Most people feel better with a certain level of certainty regarding what they are going to do today and how much money they are making. We get paid if we work and we don’t if we don’t. We are counting on head lice for our financial well being.  On the other hand, we can also come and go as we please, put in our availability to suit our personal needs and, in general, have a lot more freedom than other types of jobs allow.

The treatment center also has a special clubhouse feeling that comes from inviting a concentration of people all in a situation that nobody wants to be in into the same space. Notes are compared. Social stigmas are weakened. House cleaning techniques examined. Wives tales dissected against the backdrop of professional reality. No one minds being found out that they have head lice in their family here…maybe only here…because it is a normal day at Lice Aunties Newton. And what happens in Lice Aunties, stays in Lice Aunties.

Earlier on, we did mostly a house call service but since the treatment center came along, we have the luxury of not flying solo as often. It’s wonderful. We have a second set of eyes if we are doubting our own judgment as a result of getting tired. We have a second set of hands to switch LouseBuster ™ device treatments with comb outs so that we don’t burn out. There is  intense concentration involved and it can be exhausting. I have a lice comb callous on my thumb. Company is so nice!

It is clean and tidy and routine there. There is little variety in treatment. Some hair types need to be dealt with more time and physical effort….we had an arm wilting 5 hour comb out on one head a couple of weeks ago….but mostly it is an hour and a half, maybe two and then they are gone. We wave to them as they leave, “We hope we never see you again!” and we all laugh. And we all mean it. It is a good feeling. We fixed their bad thing.

Then we do paper work. Clean up. Wash combs. Do laundry. Go home. Wait for the phone to ring or not the next day, not worrying about what happened the day before because we know that lice lost again.

For more information on our services please go to www.liceaunties.com

Head Lice Cometh

See this cute little baby that looks like she just had her thumb up a light socket? That’s me. And see the blond bombshell holding me? That’s my Ma. Or as she will later be known as, “The Lady Who Had To Comb Head Lice From The Head Of Four Little Girls With Super Thick Hair Down To Their Arses.” Poor Ma.

Our head lice was different from modern head lice. Ours was early 1970’s head lice that died when you dumped pesticides on children’s heads. I can remember being bent over my grandmother’s sink being shampooed and combed out, swearing that this was all my little sister’s fault. I didn’t bring it home. They found it on her head. I was an innocent bystander. Woe is me. Etc. Etc.

I don’t remember getting lice again. I don’t remember it being like I hear it is now, when our clients try again and again to get rid of them, lured into a false sense of security because they treated them at home with the shampoos and then two weeks later…SHAZAM!…..more head lice. Ma combed us out and that was the end of it.

We are very busy women, The Lice Aunties. Some days more than others, in surges of busy. But when we get hit, its bad. It’s a tidal wave of vermin. Because it is very very rare to find one case of head lice in one classroom. Usually its 1 client with lice, then maybe their siblings and then a whole bunch of others from the same classroom because there was really 2 or 3 cases whom thought that they could treat it with pesticide shampoo and the others would never catch on that…THEY HAD LICE.   Only those pesky head lice have developed a resistance to the pesticides, the combs in the kits were substandard so the parent didn’t comb out the nits (and maybe some bugs) from the head thoroughly and the kids are back out there, incubating a whole new generation to crawl onto their neighbors.

The good news is that we give head lice way more power than they actually have. None of the Lice Aunties have contracted head lice since we have been working there. Oh sure, we have been worried, but the longer you treat people, the more you know how head lice operate. We know our enemy. We have seen clients learn to properly assess their own situation when their children have been exposed and treat them before an infestation ensues.  And if they do come in with a dose of cooties, we send them home clean with instructions on how to deal with the residual effects of infestation in their homes and teach them precautionary tactics.

Yes it is not in the imaginations of those inflicted. There does seem to be more than when we were kids. Old methods don’t work as well but head lice still don’t possess super powers. And they aren’t bed bugs…

For more information on services please go to www.liceaunties.com