From Ohio without swine flu or head lice...

http://headlicephotos.com/

After several weeks of silence, I thought I would pop in with a current report and a few confessions. We are now at a mission house in North Akron, Ohio. For the first three days here, I was sick, and it felt like I might spend our whole furlough under quarantine. Of all times in the history of the world, this was one of the worst to have flu symptoms, especially having just come from Mexico.

Let me say quickly - to squelch any possible rumor - that I do not have the swine flu, but just a bad upper respiratory infection. Antibiotics are taking care of it, and soon I will no longer be contagious. In the meantime, I've been resting with my own box of kleenex, my own lined trash can, and my own bottle of hand sanitizer. I'm thankful for a local doctor who made the diagnosis and gave me the needed prescriptions free of charge.

All the media hype with this "swine flu" goes to show there are some things in life to be dreaded more than head lice. What I didn't write last month for fear of frightening our future hostesses in the U.S. (Pennie, Mary, Mom, HCC...) is that one of our little girls picked up a bad case of head lice within two weeks of our coming to the states. Before I was aware of her itchy condition, we had gone to a Oaxaca Guerreros baseball game which we watched with the infected daughter on my lap, with my head resting cozy-like on her shoulder. Not a good idea in retrospect.

After we discovered the little buggers, we went into full alert. No hugs, no sharing towels, pillows, hats, combs, or brushes. Everything in the house was vacuumed, washed, or aired in the sun. Everything else possibly infected was sealed up in plastic bags until our return in September. (The morning of our departure we had a few moments of panic as we tore open a few of those bags to find Debbie's favorite little stuffed doggies to take on the plane with her.)

You cannot imagine all the remedies we tried, just to assure that we left the country without one teeny tiny missed louse or nit. Brings new understanding of the phrase "nit-picking." We washed with the special lice shampoo. We rinsed with apple cider vinegar. We used conditioner with tea tree oil. Finally we followed local friends' suggestion to apply olive oil mixed with liquified Raid (or the equivalent in Mexican bug repellent) first sprayed in a glass jar. Then we slathered this horrible mixture on our scalps, covered them in plastic garbage bags, and left it for an hour or two while we watched a movie. (Photos were forbidden!) Finally we washed and scrubbed our hair repeatedly to get all the oil out.

For the next two weeks we spent hours and hours combing through our hair with a fine tooth metal comb several times a day, just to make positively for sure we had not one teeny tiny missed louse or nit. Oh, I said that already. Anyway, we succeeded. All our friends in northern Ohio can rest assured that we have neither swine flu nor head lice. Whew.

Can anyone join in saying with me "Praise the Lord!"

Disclaimer: I do not endorse my unorthodox Raid treatment, although it did the job without any permanent hair loss or scalp damage. Who knows about long-term effects from putting such harsh chemicals directly on the body... I'd rather not think about it. Please don't scold me. It seemed a reasonable risk at the time.

http://quipster.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/cockroaches-abound/