To shave my head to get rid of lice?

[HairIsOverrated]

Tldr: I've probably got lice (though not 100% sure), I'm struggling to get rid of them and I want to stop wasting so much time and effort on this issue. I just want to cut/ shave my hair but I can't go to a hair dresser to get a proper short hair cut. If i just shave my head I'm worried about what other people think.

Ds brought lice home from school about a month ago. No problem. We used hedrin twice, wet combed a few times and that got rid of them. Unfortunately, he seems to have passed them on to me. I found one louse about a month ago in my hair and a few nits. My hair is slightly longer than ahoulder length but very, very thick. It's a nightmare to wet comb. It takes me over an hour and im pretty sure im missing large chunks of hair.

I have used hedrin shampoo 4 times now and once lyclear. I wet comb every few days but I still have nits and my head itches like crazy. After thst initial louse I never found another one but I am pretty sure that's because of my lousy wet combing technique. Im just not getting to all the roots. Dh thinks it's just dandruff or dry skin or thst my scalp is irritated from the constant treatment but I think I've still got lice. My head itches non stop. I have got a rash on my forehead and my neck and I csj still find nits on the nit comb (yup, it's a nitty gritty).

Anyway lice or not im just fed up of it. Im fed up of the wet combing, having to wash bedding and all my clothes all the time and I don't even properly hug my kids anymore because im so scared of passing the lice on to them. I just want to grt rid of this problem. Ideally i would like to just cut my hairvery short to.make wet combing easier but i can't even go to a hair dresser to get a proper short hair cut because I'm sure no hair dresser wants someone with a potential lice infection. So my only option is to use a long hair trimmer at home.

Dh shaves his head so why csnt I?

I dont care what i look like but I do care about what other people might think. If I shave my head everyone will either think (correctly) that i have got lice or that i am undergoing chemo. And they will ask questions. And I dont want to tell people I've got lice. Especially not on the school run. ds' son's school still has a lice problem so people will provably think it's because of us. But it's not. Ds doesn't have any lice and we have since cut his hair really short so it isnt hard to check.

I've got so many other things going on at the moment I dont want to waste time and energy on this nonsense.

Yabu: just put in the hours to wet comb your hair and get rid of the lice the traditional way.
Or live with them. Or act as if i I don't have lice till I actually see a live one and hope the itching will eventually go away. Having to face people's questions and telling everyone at the kids' school that this is a lousy family isn't worth it.

Yanbu: just cut the damp thing off. Life is too short to spend so much time on doing completely stupid things when there is a quick and effective solution.

If you're not finding any nits, you probably don't have them. Itchy scalp can be psychosomatic from thinking you have nits (almost everyone gets itchy when they think about nits). You also sound like you could of had a reaction to the Hedrin (the rashes) which could also cause your scalp to be itchy.

You had another thread about this a few weeks ago?

Are you absolutely sure? Because between that thread and this, enough time would have passed for eggs to have hatched and grown big enough to easily comb out.

Vamoose was the only thing that worked for me. I had waist length curly hair and it was a pain but after 2 treatments all gone!

Try Nitnot. DD has very thick hair and one treatment of this did the trick. I never found another louse after and I still comb weekly over a year later. I used it on myself too. Combed out one dead louse and never found another. And I also added a load of tea tree oil to our conditioners.

https://hairforceclinics.com/

We had this problem. I used hedrin once, vamousse and nit wits on rotation every 10 days. Like you I seemed to be really hyperaware.
My child changed schools. Haven't had them since. I used to be constantly on at the school to send emails out and ask all the parents and they always said 'oh it's not us!' I once treated the entire family and clothes etc one day. Didn't go out. Had a sleepover and the next day the kids were infected again. The mum told me shed 'checked' before. Yeah right.

Wear a hat and a scarf for the school run and I'm pretty sure nobody would notice? Especially if you don't linger.
I would just say, if anyone asks, that you have a friend going through chemo and you did it in solidarity!!

I got them years ago from my daughter. You only need to miss one and they start all over again 😫

My hair was thick, curly and bum length then, so I had a very good friend sit with a bottle of conditioner and a nit comb where she spent allll night sectioning it off and going over and over it.
That’s the only thing that worked and got rid of them, it’s impossible to do it yourself.

This sounds perfect but therr are no clinics anywhere close to me.

You could go halfway - give yourself an undercut? You'd have half the thickness to deal with when nit combing but with your hair down wouldn't look any different.

You keep saying you can’t comb it properly yourself, but why would you be doing it yourself in the first place? When I caught lice off my DC it didn’t even occur to me to do it myself, DH did it for me! He then combed every 3 days using cheap conditioner. I have very thick hair but I was all clear in 10 days.

I can comb out the eggs and i think what i see on my nitty gritty comb are nits. I just cant find any lice.

You need vodka and a roll of clingfilm. Or a lot of handgel would also work. I've got waist length hair and have had the bastards more than once.

Liberally soak your hair from root to tip with alcohol of choice. Then stick your hair in a pile on your head and wrap your scalp and hair in clingfilm. Leave it 2 hours or so and then wash. The alcohol kills the headlice dead and also dissolves the glue holding the egg casing on to the hairs.

Nit Not is the best I’ve ever used! My daughter had them recurring in Y3. Kids kept passing them round! Kills lice and eggs without needing to rely on combing (although one is included for dead ones!) and doesn’t smell too bad. Only 2 washes needed to get rid of greasy texture. Hedrin and Nitwits didn’t work for us.

Your other thread was around 3 weeks ago and you were worried about finding nits then?

Those eggs would have hatched by now if they were live.

If you found one louse last month and nothing since, you’re most likely in the clear.

Can't your OH comb out every other night for a week for you?

Trying to do your own hair would be near impossible. We always found a tonne of cheap conditioner and proper combing with a nit comb through was the best way of getting rid (assuming your hair type allows). But must be a proper comb through and every couple of days for week - 10 days.

I would do the kids, and my OH would do me (OH is bald, no issues there). Fun way of spending a few hours each night - but effective.

I'm not surprised you are sore and got rashes if you keep putting loads of the harsher chemicals on your head.

So glad the kids seem to have got past that stage...

If you’re getting desperate enough to cut your hair, I would hack it all off around chin length, which will make it much easier to treat. Then treat again as necessary. Should be much easier to get the not comb through when it’s shorter

Do you think it could be in your head?

I have had psychomatic head lice many times. I have torn up my scalp, developed eczema, and itched for months.

I paid I lice person to do a comb and she found nothing. I was just a bit crazy.

The product you have linked (and most lice treatments) will kill the lice and the eggs but they can't remove them. It is the combing that does that. (The kit and I guess the instructions include the combing)
Nits (the egg cases) as you know are glued to the hair shaft so you can easily be finding those for weeks if your combing technique isn't great and/or your hair is long and thick.
It is likely that the eggs you're finding now are dead and the itching is a combination of irritation from the products and combing and an imagined symptom. (We've all done it, talk about nits and your head itches, mine is now typing this)
If you want short hair go for it, but not because of headlice.

Dh is really busy at the moment and not very well. He has volunteered to have a look but I don't want to ask him to wet comb my hair more than once. Im also super busy and got too much going on which is why I just want to get rid of this problem if necessary with a sledge hammer.

My granddaughter caught headlice and I had to collect her from school because she was really upset about it. We went to the chemist and I bought a treatment and she has REALLY thick hair, so much so that she has to wear 4 or 5 hair bobbles to keep it in a ponytail. I put the stuff on her head, much as you would if doing your roots for hair dye, then I massaged it in all over the scalp. Once I was sure the entire scalp was saturated I combed it through the rest of the hair, adding more where necessary. Then I combed through again and left it on for the required time. I'm sure you don't need to shave your head, just do a meticulous application where you cover every millimetre of your scalp.

Shave it off then. Looks like you’ve considered all other options and discounted them, so no other option I guess!

I lived through years of the DC being reinfected at school. It is miserable. The game changer for us was CASSIA BARK. You can order a massive bag from amazon. You brew up a handful of the chips in a pan or bowl - like you are making tea for a giant. Let it soak so the water absorbs the bark. It will go pale yellow. After the usual shampoo, conditioner, do a final rinse with cassia bark infused water. Make sure your DC shut their mouths tight as it is bitter! x

I'm surprised only one person has mentioned using heat. Use a strong hairdryer to blast your hair completely dry from the roots after every wash. I inadvertently avoided a lice infection as a teenager when in very close proximity to someone who had a pretty severe case. The only difference in behaviour we could think of was that I washed and thoroughly blowdried my hair every day. We tried the same on him and it was gone pretty quickly after that.

As other have said, if those were nits they would have hatched and you would have actual lice now, which are actually easier to get out with a comb than nits are because they’re bigger. If you aren’t finding actual lice by now you most likely don’t have them.

Dandruff and flakes of scalp, especially an irritated scalp, can look like nits. If the nit hasn’t yet hatched it’s a kind of light brown colour and you can squash it between your nails and it’ll kind of pop, then you’ll know if it’s actually an egg. If you’re only finding what looks like white, flaky hatched eggs it’s more than likely from an irritated scalp. Or by now you would be crawling with live lice and be able to easily find them by now.