[dragonfly2]

I'm not sure I'm posting this in the right forum - I'm not sure quite where this should go. But if anyone might understand it, it would be other parents...so here goes....

I have bipolar disorder and have a history of hallucinations, including tactile ones. I had a bout of them over the summer and have been okay for a while. But now I'm afraid they may be coming back soon.

I got the call from the school nurse that every parent dreads: my daughter has head lice. My girls are 10 and 13 and I've never had to deal with this before. When I got to the school and the nurse told me, I was in tears. I got the medicated shampoo and took my daughter home. She washed her hair and used the medicated shampoo, and I just became paralyzed. I couldn't touch her to get the nits out of her hair. I had to call my husband home from work. (He works an hour away and had just gotten into work for the evening.) I couldn't touch anything that might have come into contact with her head. Somehow I've managed to wash bedding and clothing and such, but not without copious amounts of handwashing afterwards. This was last Monday when all this began.

Well, almost a week has gone by and now the nits that weren't killed by the shampoo and weren't discovered soon enough (she has long, thick hair) have hatched and my husband found them this weekend. Once again, I am paralyzed and really freaking out about this. I've done so much laundry over the last few days that our well has run dry and even after washing things in hot water and putting them in the dryer for an hour and a half, I still can't touch anything with even one stray hair on it.

Now, I do not have OCD. Before I had to stop working because of the bipolar, I was a clinical microbiologist and handled bacteria and fungi all the time. These little bugs are paralyzing me. I feel awful that I can't hug my daughter. She's handling it very well and my husband has been a trooper, checking her hair every day, and twice a day this weekend. The school nurse is also helping. I just can't do it.

I'm starting to feel the little twitches on my head every now and then. The nurse checked me and my husband has checked me twice and I don't have any - none of the rest of the family does thankfully - but every little twinge is making me batty.

I see my pdoc for my regular appointment on Tuesday, so if I do start to really hallucinate, we'll be on top of it. But in the meantime, I'm slowly losing what's left of my mind.

I guess I just needed to vent. Thanks for listening.

[AnotherDayDown]

I would have to load up on my anxiety pills too to deal with....can't even say it. The thought makes me itch. I am proud of you for going to your doctor tho.

[dragonfly2]

Thank you so much for your reply. I know I said I was venting, but when nobody responded in any way, I began to feel ashamed and thought about trying to remove the post somehow. It's been a really hard week. It looks like my husband and the school nurse have gotten them all and her hair is clean, so I'm hoping this is over now.

Thanks again.

[zbmom]

That kind of stuff FREAKS me out too! I would probably be hiring a service or something to come and help us. A trick I learned is that if you put gel in your kid's hair they won't catch lice. Lice like clean hair and they can't move in the gel. So going this route when my son starts school.

[BlueInanna]

Hi Dragonfly, please don't feel ashamed - my life is so messed up... We're here to support each other.

It's good you're seeing the doctor soon, anxiety pills sound good. My pdoc would prob say be careful about catastrophic thinking... but you do have good reason to be freaked out because of the past experiences you've had to go through with hallucinations. I'm so sorry you've had to go through all that.

When i'm having a bug fear, i do an energy work thing where i take a deep breath and vision a white light from my heart coming out to fill my aura about a foot around my body. This seems to keep me safe, or at least calm me down.

Good luck, hope all goes well with the doc. Keep us posted!

[dragonfly2]

Thanks zbmom - I'll have to remember the gel trick.

Thanks BlueInanna -
I like your visualization idea - I used to do meditative work like that. It's been so long, I'm sure I'm way out of practice. I will put it in the tool box if it comes up again.

The lice are gone and no hallucinations!

No med changes right now. My moods have been a bit on the dark side, but that's not from this issue. I think we're done with the lice - my husband checked her again today and didn't find anything. I'm so happy it's over.

Thanks again -

[BlueInanna]

I love good news!

[Perna]

I think lots of us think of bugs crawling on ourselves if we see them? I know I get hyper vigilant when my cat captures crickets that have come in the porch and brings them into the house; if we scare her too much and are not fast enough, she'll carry them all the way upstairs to our bedroom and then it's impossible for me to go to bed without finding them? Or if I have to kill a spider I worry about them. After awhile though, with no bugs or additional mishaps, things simmer down. I am always glad for winter, fewer possibilities for them.