Gross out!

[gwenith]

I can take virtually anything - suppurating wounds, vile sputum, vomit - you name it but the other day I totally grossed out.

The patient I had was vented and sweaty so I wiped his hair and when I took the cloth away there they were - about 1 mm long and engorged with blood!!!

And Active!!! They were racing across the cloth toward my arm!

I moved fast to ditch the lot in the bin but......

AAARRGGG!!!

My head immediately started to itch. But guess whose job it was to remedy the situation? Moi! Came home and peeled out of my uniform - it went straight into the washing machine - I jumped into the shower with the head lice treatment and even after all of that still felt itchy.

Now confess - how many of you reading this are starting to scratch???

[live4today, RN]

Amazing! Guess for some it rings true then, eh? :)

[bedpan]

i still get this visual every time i open this thread -

"mental image of nit trying to hang onto slippery hair like a greasy rope going aaaaahhhhhh splat!"

thanx again for the smile gwenith! :chuckle

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

Definitely not as mad as it sounds we are finding out more and more that there were sound reasons for genetic variance.

Interestingly Australians Aborigines do not have tight curly hair but soft curly and even blonde hair!! Torres Straight Islanders and the Papua New Guinea natives who are the same racial type, predominantly had tight curls more like the norm for African negros

I hope no-one take offense at this I am trying to talk of the variance in racial types from a purely scientific viewpoint.

[coffeehound]

I was always told that the reason that African Americans do not get head lice is that their hair shafts have an oval rather than a round shape. Lice have round pinchers and are unable to get a good grasp on oval hair shafts.

Have no idea if this is true, but I do know we never had a lice outbreak the whole time I was growing up and it was always attributed to the fact that I live in an area that is predominantly African American.

[Good_Queen_Bess]

Originally posted by Brownms46

Remind me never to read anything that says "Gross Out"!

LMAO!!!!!!! So true. I can't stop itching! My body is one big massive dam ITCH!

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

My children never had them either, thank God. And I was a school bus driver for fifteen years. But we were always told not to share combs, hats, etc., and to wear a hat if we felt uncomfortable. Personally, I didn't wear a hat, because I don't like them. But when I was a little girl, all five of us had them. UGH!

[jayna, RN]

Arrghhhhh!!!...

[ShelleyERgirl, LPN]

Gwennie, I always just love your posts woman! When I was stationed in Orlando, I was assigned to the womans pap smear clinic. Fun, fun, fun. One company had a major outbreak of crabs and myself and another corpsman had the thrilling task of combing through about 200 womens' pubes looking for the little bungee jumping critters so we could treat any one infected with the little burgers. Let's just say it was NOT the funnest day of my medical career. I could not stop scratching for days afterward!

[MomNRN, BSN, RN]

I love this post!

This is what I get to deal with alot being a school nurse!

Whenever we have a suspected case, I immediately put my hair up in a clip before even getting near the child. I have seen so many lice and nits, I don't get itchy anymore!

Much advice listed above is true! But, like Smiling Blue Eyes said - the nits are the key! If you don't get the nits out, you are asking for trouble!

Also, remember to vacuum anywhere your head comes in contact with. Pillows, sofas, cars, etc.

Regarding African-American hair and lice, I also have read that their hair strand is oval and lice in North America prefer the round hair strand. But, in Africa the converse is true, primarily only those black hair strands are susceptible.

I cannot remember where I read this, but it has held true at our school!

Less than one month and counting! Back to school August 18th!