One small word, one big problem

Not been much to report this week, so I have been rather quiet.

As the weekend approaches, I have a lot of things to try and close this week, so things are busy, but manageable.

As for the title, the small word in question is "nit".  Maggot 1 has got them, and the little suckers are very hard to eradicate, as anyone who has experienced them will confirm.  We are now on a daily "wet comb" treatment for the whole family, which means using a nit comb through conditioned hair.  The fine-toothed comb gets most of the little suckers, and the conditioner makes the hair and scalp slippery so the little darlings cannot hold on with their evil claws which are on the end of each of their six evil legs. 

For those who like to know the details, the following passage describes all you would ever want to know about head lice and nits, and it may well be telling you too much.

Head lice are wingless insects. They are grey or brown, have six legs and are about 1 to 3mm in length when fully grown (the size of a sesame seed). Female head lice lay eggs that are smaller than a pinhead and these attach to your hair close to the scalp. The eggs hatch about seven to 10 days later. Young lice are called nymphs - it takes about 10 days for them to become adults and capable of laying new eggs.
When lice hatch they leave empty shells called nits attached to the hair. Nits are white and you may mistake them for flakes of dry skin. Unlike dandruff, nits stick to the hair and you won't be able to remove them with normal shampooing.

So, in summary, there is a new generation of lice every 10 days, and if you do not remove every single egg, they can stick around for much longer than is entirely healthy.

The hardest thing is that the mere mention of "nit" has the unfortunate effect of making you itch, all over, but particularly your head.  Now I have wet-combed myself and it seems I do not have any infection.  However, try telling that to my itch gland.

On that note, have a great weekend, which I hope is considerably less itchy than ours is likely to be.