But, it’s probably not what you think.

Trying to explain the Fall of 2013 would be a book all by itself. I cannot begin to convey with a single post much less anything approaching brevity the sensory battlefield we were already entrenched on. Let’s just say, things were difficult by the time I was getting an Ultrasound done at a local hospital for abnormal bleeding between periods. I hadn’t even made it back to our house yet when my doctor’s office called, telling me that I needed to see a specialist right away. There was mass in my uterus, but it wasn’t shaped like a normal polyp. There was no blood supply detected, no fluid in it, and given some of my past medical history they felt I should see someone as soon as possible.

Maybe we could pretend you’re reading a slide show and I can say there was an outpatient procedure to cut out the mass and scrape everything else out of my uterus and send it off to a lab for testing. There was a post-procedure infection. Something went wrong and I experienced two days worth of pretty heavy bleeding that left me needing three naps a day for a while. Hannah had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic the same day that started, and Andy slipped down the stairs while he was carrying down Tony’s stroller earlier that same week and injured his foot so badly he couldn’t put weight on it for a while. Tony couldn’t crawl, and he couldn’t pull or push to stand, but if he could take a few steps independently. However, he had no protective reflex and pretty significant balance problems and could not be left unattended or he would fall straight to his head. He vomited regularly for a variety of sensory related reasons, and there were a host of other challenges including self-harming and significant problems sleeping.

Let’s just say the suck factor was there for a little bit, but I was buoyed by the pathology findings and my doctor’s assurance that the new medication I was going on would reduce my risk going into the future. With everything that was happening, I remember several dark days of Andy and I taking turns resting and helping Tony as best we could. K.Q. was able to come over and help me straighten up my kitchen a little after I was mostly recovered, but up until that point we were our own little tag team. I couldn’t even begin to keep Hannah completely occupied on my own, so I was profoundly grateful the neighbor kids wanted to come over and play with her so much.

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, I was helping Hannah do her hair before church when I saw the first scurrying little beastie on her scalp. I had never seen lice before in my life, but I had that sort of sinking sensation that comes from already feeling like you’re living through misfortunes seemingly befit a Biblical text. I sprayed it, tweezed it off, bagged it, and communed with Google as my stomach filled with lead. I’ll give you another slide: those neighbor kids were able to come over so much because they had been sent home from school with lice, and their mom washed their hair with lavender shampoo and then sent them over here to play.

Just so you know in case you are uncertain, lavender shampoo will not get rid of lice. And, I encountered a number of other erroneous beliefs that were mistakenly held as fact by many people I talked to from the moment I found that first bug onward. Just for a touch more of quick lice myth busting: You can’t bathe lice off, they actually like clean hair just as well (so poor hygiene is definitely not what attracts them), they don’t jump, they don’t fly, and they need direct physical contact with a person’s hair to transfer over. The eggs require the humidity and moisture of the scalp to hatch, so if a hair falls off with one, they become inert pretty quickly, and lice cannot survive on other animals- just humans. They will also die within 24 hours of falling off of a human host, so they can’t live indefinitely on other surfaces. And, because the way their legs have adapted for movement on a hair shaft, they don’t travel well off of one unless they come in contact with another one.

I was still struggling with fatigue, but I began the process of fumigating, bagging, re-laundering, bleaching, applying RID to Hannah’s hair…and cleaning puke. Tony couldn’t handle the smells of all of these things and so I would go back and forth between dealing with the infestation and cleaning vomit. After midnight on that first day, Hannah had received her first combing and treatment, the house was effectively bombed with chemicals, Andy and Tony had been shaved, and my honey was going through my hair just to make sure.

Hannah had been using my brush because hers went missing. I have been blessed with super lush hair (unfortunately the nits were the exact same color), and while he was able to comb out a louse, he couldn’t see the eggs. And, as we found out after Hannah’s first treatment, our little friends were RID resistant. Ultimately, we ended up with a rather pricey prescription shampoo for Hannah that was not covered by insurance (lice are considered cosmetic in the medical community here since they don’t transmit diseases).

In that moment, I looked at my honey who was working full time and in grad school. I heard his offers to do his best to try and get everything out of my hair, but I knew this would make it impossible for him to get sleep and accomplish his other responsibilities. I knew no one was going to be coming in to help- those who were willing were unable, and those who were able were unwilling. So I asked him to help me shave it all off. Having a lingering infestation because we couldn’t find everything was more than I felt up to handling on top of everything else. The amount of money required to kill everything in my thick head of hair with a prescription shampoo was really more than we had for that- I felt that money was better spent on other things. My worth isn’t attached to my hair, and my sanity and recovering health (or so I thought at the time) didn’t need to be handed over either for something that would grow back so quickly.

More moments crammed into two-dimensional slides: an emotional forest fire of critical gossip over my choice that went through our social circle, with an occasional remark addressed directly to me. Me as a mom so besieged by circumstances I explained to those few people who talked to me directly about all of this that if someone wasn’t willing to be part of the solution, they had not earned the right to comment on what I did to take care of myself and my family. An anonymous person(s) who left twelve days of Christmas gifts at my door to try and help me feel that somewhere, by someone I was deeply loved. Fatigue that was continuing to get worse. A smack-down on lice that was so brutal and thorough that not a thing was left to be found on anybody or anywhere in our house in just under three days.

This wasn’t a story that stopped here in terms of what we handled related to this experience. Social stigma often doesn’t play nice. What I would hope to see though, is a story reframed- a story where no one is made to feel badly for what they did and didn’t do during that moment of time. I don’t believe in shaming anyone. I am not a perfect person, I make mistakes all the time and so I believe in giving the type of mercy I so frequently need. Love, as far as I’m concerned, is always the answer. What I would hope for in the future is a different kind of story to emerge, one where people can feel emboldened by scientific facts to don a shower cap if need be and lend a helping hand to someone going through tough times that ends up with a lice infestation.

I read some pretty dry scientific studies when I was going after our infestation, and I wouldn’t expect most people to do that. The National Library of Medicine has a good overview that covers lice FAQ’s and effective treatments, should you or anyone you love ever need it.