Photo-illustration: The cup; PhotosGetty Images
When I found out my family had lice – and I mean lice, bugs crawling on all of our scalps except my husband’s – I thought I could deal with it on my own. It turned out that wasn’t the case. Two days after washing everyone with over-the-counter Nix and combing through every visible stain and bug in everyone’s hair, doing all the laundry, quarantining lint near the head, and passing the vacuuming everything our heads had touched, our babysitter texted me to tell us she saw a bug crawling on my 9-year-old son Raffi’s head. Naturally, she panicked, and soon so did we. We were both planning to go out the next evening, which was no longer an option (we’ll be lucky if she ever keeps us again), and we realized that combing and shampooing at home doesn’t work. was not going to be enough to defeat our new unwanted guests. After another try with the Nix because there was still some left in the bottle, we made an appointment the next day at the Gowanus location of LiceBusters, one of many thriving lice removal services in New York.
As he made the final pass through my long hair with a comb and buckets of Pantene sprinkled with baking soda, LiceBusters owner Daniel Harel told me his business was booming. The lice, which had spent the pandemic as quietly in quarantine as the rest of us, were now back with a vengeance, and perhaps worse than ever. His theory, he later explained to me, is that many schools stopped using companies like his to come check their students for lice when school went remote and only resumed only recently their activities. Now that LiceBusters is back in schools, he’s seeing more lice than ever before: “Normally, before COVID, about 5% of the students in the school had lice, but now we have some schools where 20, 30 % of students had them. It’s gotten so bad. A number of other companies that perform routine lice checks in schools are also experiencing more serious lice outbreaks than in previous years.
At his clinic, where he and his team perform check-ups, combings, a final shampoo and blow-dry, Harel sees as many as 100 or 150 people in a busy day. “For most people trying to treat it at home, the quickest and easiest thing to find is pesticide at the pharmacy. But it is proven that these methods do not work,” he says. This is because they kill live lice only on the scalp and to completely treat an infestation, the sticky eggs attached to the hairline must also be carefully combed out, a process that is not done by any of the shampoos. on the market. And most people don’t have the training or dedication to spend the time necessary to comb globs of thick conditioner through their own and their children’s hair to get every last nit.
Professional treatment may be the best solution, but for many people it is cost prohibitive, although part of the cost may be covered by health insurance. (I paid for my own treatment, which was $250, directly from my HSA.) For an entire family with lice, you’re looking at a thousand dollar price tag for the service, some or all of which might not not succeed. be reimbursed by your insurer.
Brooklyn mom Carol Cohen, who has used the service twice in the past year, is fed up with the high price of an ongoing lice infestation. She has two school-aged sons, both of whom have had bugs and eggs on their scalps several times since their first visit, which occurred after a trip last fall to visit various family friends. “We got lice in California, we brought them to Italy, and then we brought them back here,” she says. Like me, Cohen first tried to treat the problem at home, then ended up seeking professional service. Then, a few months later, she spotted nits on her youngest son in the playground and had to start the whole hassle (and the entire $1,000) again. This time around, she feels like she’s observed the process in enough detail to be confident that she can handle the infestation she’s currently facing on her own with Pantene and a comb at the ready. “The first time we got it, I was like, Of course, that’s a lot of money. But we did it, and now everything is fine. But this time it’s like I had to do it and I had to do it a month later, I was like, No no. It’s two thousand dollars, and now it would be three thousand dollars,” she says. “When you pay that much money, you say to yourself: Okay, I paid the money. So I’m sure they know what they’re doing. But in reality, don’t offend them, they’re just people used to looking at lice all day long.
Georgia Kral, who lives in Montclair, hired a service called Lice Happens to come to her home when her 8-year-old daughter was sent home from school with lice. For $300, the woman used an enzyme treatment designed to loosen the nits from the hair shaft and performed a thorough combing; Kral estimates it took about two hours. The lady from Lice Happens asked her to re-comb the next day, during which she discovered two nits and panicked again: “I was like, Oh my God, she didn’t understand them all. But the lady was so consumer-focused that she said, “Send me a picture tomorrow of what you find.” » » She reassured Kral that it was okay to continue finding nits, and Kral felt better. Repeated searches came up empty and the infestation did not spread to any other members of Kral’s family. So she decided the department had done a good job. She continues to check her children’s heads every two weeks for nits, knowing that the school will not reliably notify her if there is an outbreak in one of her children’s classes. Last time she was told a note had been sent home, but she never received it.
Pediatrician Philippa Gordon advises parents who don’t want to go the professional route to use a prescription insecticide called Ovid: “It kills adults and nits, so you don’t have to worry about removing the nits you could see after treatment. » (It also includes malathion, which she says is the only pesticide allowed on farms transitioning from conventional to organic farming because of its low toxicity.) The next best thing, if Ovide is not available, is to use an over the counter remedy. like Nix every day for five to seven days, then killing adult lice and nits, although it does not kill the nits. “If you continue to eliminate all the adults, you will eventually prevail,” says Gordon. She’s not entirely convinced of the need to shell out so much money for professional services: “It’s expensive and time-consuming, but many families swear by these services.” Then again, delousing at home also takes a lot of time – and at least with professionals you can feel a sense of relief that you’ve outsourced the problem.
I know I felt great the day of my professional delousing, even though I spent the rest of my work day smelling like Pantene and with a faint powdery residue of baking soda running down my temples, mixing with my sweat. It was mildly unpleasant, sure, but it was nothing compared to the creeping body horror of knowing you’re walking around with bugs in your hair.