I’m pictured with my youngest daughter here. As you can see, she’s now grown. But once she was a little girl tho needed her Tonsils and Adenoids removed.

We arrived promptly at 6am on surgery day. We had waited months for this surgery, and hoped it would finally cure the Sleep Apnea and Bronchospasms that had caused her to wake in a panic, unable to catch her breath for most of her life.

They took her back to the Operating room and her dad and I settled in to wait for her return. They told us the surgery would take about 45 minutes, so we were surprised when the Surgeon walked into our room just a few minutes after they had wheeled her away.

“She’s fine.” he quickly stated, noting the concern on our faces.

He slowly opened up what he had in his hand and it became evident it was a wadded up piece of paper towel, with a smashed bug inside

“Unfortunately she’s got Head Lice. A pretty good case of it too”.

“We are still going to do the surgery, the nurse is putting her hair in braids now” he continued.

What? How did we miss this? I tried to rack my brain and remember if she had been itching her head lately. At 9, she washed and brushed her own hair, so I guess I just hadn’t noticed. How hadn’t I noticed?

The embarassment and shame washed over me. Knowing that every nurse, receptionist, and probably custodian knew and dreaded the eyes as we left the outpatient surgery center, wishing we could sneak out a back door.

As we drove home we made a stop at the first Pharmacy we saw for a kit that claimed to eradicate lice in just one treatment. Extra strength.

That afternoon as she slept, I saturated her head in the solution. The chemical was so strong it burned my nostrils as I worked it into her hair. And then with the provided little comb in the box I did what the instructions said… In sections, I combed and combed and combed and combed. When i was finished i went back and combed again, still pulling out live, crawling bugs of various sizes from her hair at every pass.

And we repeated this process day after day in between trips to the ER for dehydration, bleeding, and uncontrollable pain. When we were home, we were sitting on that couch trying to get rid of this lice. My poor daughter was just trying to recover from surgery, and every day enduring a process that limited rest.

Every day I went to the drug store and got a different box of something. I think we used every box on the shelf. I bought electric combs that promised to zap the lice dead on contact, I bought “all natural” essential oil shampoo, I got a prescription from the doctor for a gel that promised to suffocate them, and another prescription that I was assured worked on “super lice”. I put mayonnaise on her head. I put olive oil on her head. I tried something new Google suggested every day and I still combed out live lice, eggs, and nits. This went on for SIX WEEKS.

Still, we had lice. And I say WE because by now, I had it too!

Finally, desperate, I paid a few hundred dollars for a Lice “Certification” course.

Special Note: Lice Removal is not regulated in the U.S. There is no Governing body that certifies or licenses Lice Technicians in any way, in any State. If someone tells you’re they’re Certified in Lice Removal…. all that means is that they are Trained by someone (Usually a Chain Lice Removal business) and the instructor gave them a “Certificate of Completion”. That course could be very thorough with hands on training by people who actually know their stuff, or nothing more than watching videos by someone who thinks they know how to remove lice. There are NO criteria or industry standards to certify, it’s simply a buzz word to sound official.

This is a trigger point for me and I will scream it from the rooftops everytime someone says they are “Certified”. End Rant.

Thankfully that course was great and help us turn the corner. I realized that the combs I was using from the drug store were garbage, The Solutions I was using were not only SUPER toxic, but just didn’t work, and all the gimmicks were basically snake oil. On top of having lice, I was now terrified by the amount of chemicals I had dumped on my child’s head.

We got rid of the lice pretty quickly after that with the techniques I learned in that course that I still use today (with some updated training).

I’d love to say we never got lice again, but with 7 kids…. even with best efforts it happens. But now I knew to check often and know what to look for. By now I knew how to remove them quickly right away when there was only a couple of bugs, preventing an entire infestation.

Parents…. Lice doesn’t mean you’re dirty. Lice doesn’t mean you’re negligent. Lice doesn’t mean you’re failing as a parent. Lice means you’re human. And the fact that you even found Lice Free Tennessee…. well that tells me you’re doing a good job to fight it.