Before we opened our treatment center, we used to do treatments in the homes of our clients. There was occasionally a client so freaked out that no matter what I would say, they would scrub or vacuum or throw out every surface that a louse could possibly have been within contact in the most convoluted of circumstance, sometimes giving them super powers in the process. I knew the biological limitations of the insect and would give the information but if I tried to stop them for carrying out their process of cleaning up, they would just worry that it was wrong. It made them feel better to do it.
The reactions of our clients vary. We are all creatures of our environment and experiences. Sometimes people were punished for contracting head lice in their past when they were kids making having them in their home is a personal affront. Some clients had treated their children with different methods that didn’t work and had finally conceded that the time and money invested accumulated to more than one shot of guaranteed work with us. Sometimes whole families were infested. Sometimes there was an extreme amount of dense hair, making the scalp aka head lice ground zero nearly impossible to an untrained person. Sometimes the person lived alone and couldn’t comb out themselves reliably. Others were repeat customers. Others saw it as a plain old nuisance not much worse than a cold and wanted to move on with their lives as fast as possible. And others cried. Exhausted. Irritated. Deeply offended. Humiliated.
There is something about moving away from the home and being treated in a safe environment, stepping out of the chaos that erupts and being told that no matter what, we will take care of you. That if for some reason the minute chance that the treatment is not 100% effective, we have your back. You can come to this clean place and we eliminate any physical possibility that we can fathom that you will transport the lice back to your home. You can come back and have us look again after you have been treated to make you feel better.
We opened this center over a year ago and I don’t think that even we grasped the idea that it could often be a place filled with laughter. On some days it takes on the feel of a support meeting for the lice inflicted to compare notes. Most people don’t intend to socialize. They bring their headphones. We provide wifi. Often they worry about being discovered by a neighbor there and then they realize if the neighbor is there, they have lice too. But again and again, they realize that they are so relieved to be freed from the tyranny of head lice infestation and they finally can just relax. We don’t give you tons of after care (follow up quick comb outs and head checks at home). Come back if we treated you and you are still worried. It takes ten minutes to double check. We send you home ready to deal with minimal clean up, armed with facts, not fear.
If you still want to scrub your house from ceiling to floor, well…you get a really clean house so it won’t hurt. But either way, you will come home clean and good to finish it. It is no longer a huge mountain to climb and the lice are about to be a thing of the past.
The Lice Aunties 