Nit Nurse

With children returning to school, parents are apparently rushing to the shops to buy nit combs - Boots was completely sold out.  They are not the only ones buying them.  I had a busy and heavily scented weekend – not quite roses and perfume, more your local chippy.

On Saturday I defrosted a huge bag of fish scraps for the dog – yes, my life really is that rock and roll.   I spent an hour or so poaching and deboning the fish, filling the house with eau de fishing vessel.  It’s a bit fiddly, but I don’t like to give him tinned dog food and even with the frozen meat I buy at the pet shop, I wonder exactly what is in there.  With the fish scraps mixed with rice and vegetables, I know exactly what he is being fed.   I say all this as if he has a rigidly controlled diet, when the reality is he also gets spoilt with dog treats and scraps from what I eat – which is nowhere near as healthy as his food. 

Sunday finished with a very strong smell of vinegar.  I decided that the garden had been neglected long enough and I should spend an hour or so tidying it up.  An hour or so became 8 hours, much to the dog’s delight.  His favourite places in the garden are behind the shed, waiting in vain to catch next door’s cat; and standing at the back gate, wagging his tail every time someone walks past.  I wonder if his little doggy brain has worked out that they can’t see him through the wooden gate, or if he is so used to not seeing anything, he just assumes that everyone can see him all of the time. 

Whilst relaxing after my mammoth gardening session, I realised that my scalp felt as if it was burning.   I had tied it in a ponytail to keep it out of the way, but it was more a loosely gathered than a Croydon facelift taut style of ponytail, so I couldn’t see how that could make my scalp burn.  It hadn't been that hot and my hair is quite thick, so I ruled out sunburn.  At a loss to explain the burnin, I had a quick look on Google.  GPs must absolutely rue the day Google was invented.  Before it came along, you’d have to be a really dedicated hypochondriac and invest in a medical dictionary to look up random symptoms and jump to extreme conclusions over a few sniffles.  Now we can all indulge in Munchhausen Syndrome, just by tapping into Google.  It would cost the NHS a fortune, if they still had any money left to treat us all. 

According to Google, it could be trichodynia resulting from iron deficiency, thyroid problems or stress.  Stress would make sense, I am under a lot of stress at the moment – possibly because I keep looking too many things up on Google.  Once I starting thinking about it all, the burning seemed to get worse.   My imagination ran riot.  I wondered if my hair would fall out and if so would I opt for baldness or wear a wig?  I am far from being a hypochondriac, if anything I avoid the doctors and can go for a couple of years without a visit.  I moved back to Kent nearly 2 years ago, and it is only 1 month since I registered with the GP again.  It is Google that does this to me, Google and too much time on my hands.   When I say ‘it is Google’, clearly I mean that it is me.  Google does many things, but it doesn’t yet control our thoughts and actions – although I suspect somewhere in a basement, they have someone working on that.

An unwelcome thought popped into my head as I rubbed my burning scalp, it occurred to me that it might not be ‘burning’, it might be ‘itching’.  There could be THINGS living in my hair.  I don’t have children.  I have many friends and relatives with children, and they all seem very blasé about hair lice.  I have never had hair lice.  When I first went backpacking, I inspected for head lice regularly, convinced that lice, bed bugs and scabies were just lying in wait in every hostel.   But in all my travels, I only ever got stomach bugs.  No creepy crawly flesh eaters, cadging a free ride.  I Googled head-lice.  ( I am quite tempted to remove Google from my laptop, it could be far better for my long-term sanity). I racked by brain as to how I could have got headlice – I live alone.  It is a couple of weeks since I had visited anyone with children, had my scalp just started burning today, or had I been ignoring it for days?

I went in search of a fine toothed comb.  It was a plastic one, but it was 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, and needs must when your head is  full of nonsense.  I spent some time combing sections of my dry hair and inspecting the comb against a dark flannel.  Google had advised me to look for small white eggs, the size of a pin head, and beige/grey nits the size of a sesame seed.  Every fleck was carefully examined.  There was definitely nothing that looked like a louse, but I worried over every fleck – was it an egg, was it a flake of skin, was it a scrap of garden debris. 

Google had assured me that headlice did not mean I was dirty and they could be eradicated.  But I was still in favour of thyroid problem or stress over lice living off my scalp (not iron deficiency, I don’t like the tablets).  There is no logic there.  If the choice is that you can be on medication for the rest of your life, or you can have a few bugs which a disgusting smelling shampoo and a fine-toothed comb will get rid of, why would anyone plump for a thyroid problem?  

By the time I had dragged the comb through every strand of my hair several times, my scalp was not just burning, it was also very sore.  I had dug the comb in as near to the scalp as possible “to pick up the eggs”.  I wasn’t sure I had actually picked up any, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.  The sensible thing to do at this point would have been to go to bed and visit the pharmacy or the doctor in the morning.  The really stupid thing to do would have been to consult Google for a home remedy that could be administered straight away to combat the headlice that may not actually be there.  It was gone 11, bed and a trip to the pharmacy was definitely the wise option.  However the home remedy was normal hair conditioner and vinegar – and what do you know, I have those things!  I spent a ridiculous amount of time combing conditioner through my hair and checking the comb again after every section.   I rinsed with water as hot as I could stand it – on the basis that if it hurt me, surely it must kill the teeny tiny little buggers that might be there?  Nowhere on Google had it said ‘parboil your own scalp, but with my extensive medical knowledge garnered from drooling over George Clooney in ER, I decided a scalding was called for.  By now my scalp was quite literally burning.  The final rinse of vinegar was to stay on overnight – because that kills the eggs.  I hadn’t found any evidence of eggs that could be relied upon, let alone a living, munching louse, but the terror of having of headlice drove me on. 

The vinegar rinse was quite painful on my now very tender scalp.  Even worse, it got in my eyes.  Vinegar descales kettles, and here I was virtually using it as an eyewash.   I have wondered all day if they look clearer and brighter to everyone else – or just bloodshot and acid burnt? I towel dried my hair and, having disinfected the comb with vinegar, I combed it through again.  This time I found three or four little brown blobs.  I rushed to Google, dripping wet, reeking of vinegar.  They were too dark for eggs or lice, but they could be lice droppings – lice are the size of a pin, how the hell can they have droppings visible to the human eye, let alone the acid-washed human eye?  Then common sense turned up – how welcome that would have been a few hours earlier, but better late than never – I had got dark brown towels out (to see the eggs more clearly!) so it could very likely be towel lint.  I took a pin to the lice droppings / towel lint – definitely towel lint.  It was nearly 1 in the morning, I had found no evidence of any infestation, but neither of those facts deterred me from a clean-up operation that would put a brain-surgery operating room to shame.    I scoured the sink and the bath.  I bagged up any hair, tissues, hair pins, etc. and sealed the bag (lice cannot jump, I had found no evidence of them anyway, but just in case my hair had harboured a super-species, I was taking no risks).  I gathered up the towels and flannels and put them on a hot wash.  I put my hairbrush, comb and hair slides in a vinegar solution to ‘kill the eggs’ just in case a few invisible ones were lurking. 

Before getting into bed, I inspected my pillow carefully.   It was spotless.   I would check it again in the morning.  Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t take photos of it for forensic level comparison.  As I drifted off to sleep, I could just about detect the scent of tea tree oil condition under the overwhelming whiff of vinegar.

This morning I went to the pharmacy.  Amazingly my poor, battered, scalded scalp no longer hurt.  Less amazingly, due to the complete lack of evidence, I had it confirmed that I don’t have head lice, and as my scalp no longer burns, I very probably don’t have a thyroid problem either.  The vinegar smell has been with me all day, to remind me of my late-night lunacy.  I bought a proper lice comb anyway – just in case I have another late night desire to administer self-torture.   I am almost tempted to hire myself out as a nit nurse.  I would quite like to find eggs and a few lice - in someone else's hair of course, just to make the hours of researching on Google and forensic inspection of my own head seem worthwhile.