(no subject)

[danaeris]

The acheyness went away, mostly, and my temperature is normal. Maybe I'd just been sitting in the same position for too long.

Another grooming session yielded one live louse. I guess it was optimistic to think I'm done. I won't be done until I've groomed myself over the course of a good two weeks and found none.

Still, it was a really thorough grooming session (for what I can do on my own), and I found no eggs, and only the one louse (which I BELIEVE was not of egg laying age). Lots of dandruff though.

My scalp feels WAY better than before. Hardly itchy and irritated at all, if at all. Given that, I can live with still being mildly infested as long as it goes away EVENTUALLY. I will continue the usual observations -- keep my hair up all the time, clean with tea tree oil shampoo and conditioner, and once a week shampoo with the stuff that kills the live ones, rotating through shampoos. Clean my sheets and clothing at the same time, and sterilize my hair stuff with boiling water.

BTW, if you're paranoid about catching lice and you're spending time around me or someone else who has lice, here's a few tips which may or may not help:

• Find a shampoo and/or conditioner that contains tea tree oil. I've been using the Nature's Gate stuff, and they are also non-medicated dandruff treatments. This is a fairly widely accepted herbal remedy, but that doesn't mean it is perfectly effective against lice.
  
• Dye your hair early. If you dye your hair regularly anyway, dye it a little more often for a while. Rumor has it that hair dye will kill them.
  
• Use styling products. Usually to treat your hair right, styling products are the enemy, but in this case, its quite the opposite. It is widely accepted that lice dislike dirty heads. The styling gel, hairspray, etc. will make them less likely to choose your head.
  
• If you have long hair, wear it up when around anyone who might have an infestation.
  

I'm watching Pirates in french. I can follow it without difficulty, but it probably helps that I've watched it many times before in English. Still. It's nice to be able to watch it and hear so many phrases and realize I understand most of them. I'm hoping many more of my DVDs have french tracks so I can do a lot more of this over the summer. If I do it enough, and look up words I don't understand, I may regain a lot of my french.

Comments

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Yay for progress!

The other thing that I've found that's great for foreign language (re)acquisition is children's books. I have Harold and the Purple Crayon, Curious George and Harry the Dirty Dog in Spanish. My Spanish isn't that good, but since I've read all these in English, and they all have pictures, I can manage to puzzle it out enough to give a rough translation to Allegra while reading them.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

When I watch familiar movies in French, I always get annoyed at the bits they don't translate right.

[coffeekitty.livejournal.com]

i'm hoping that this isn't an annoying question; i'm just curious. when my hedgehog had mites, the vet dealt by giving her injections of ivermectin such that all of the mites that bit her would die. why don't they do something similar for humans?

[rightsock.livejournal.com]

ivermectin will not work against head lice. wrong drug for the wrong critter.

It can be adsorbed through the skin, and you must carefully control the dosage. It's a prescription only controlled substance.

from http://msds.farnam.com/msds/m001117.htm
LD 50 Mouse, oral 25 mg/kg
LD 50 Rat, oral 50 mg/kg
LD 50 Dog, oral apprx 80 mg/kg

Where the typical dose for a dog is upto 0.3mg/kg for skin parasite control. (Therefore, you're dosing at about 1/266th the LD-50 dose)

There are always concerns about toxicity and increased likelihood of death in the young and elderly, but it has been used as a topical treatment for scabies ( http://www.safe2use.com/scabiesboard/ivermectin/Ivermectin-Deaths-Scabies.htm )

and one more listing several existing topical drugs that are effective against head lice, and what they actually do to the lice:
http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic298.htm

for example,

Pyrethrin products (A200 Pyrinate, End Lice, RID Mousse, RID Shampoo) -- Used in the treatment of Pediculus humanus infestations. The parasite absorbs the drug where its nervous system is stimulated, causing seizure and death to the parasite.


The real question is do you want that much drug in your system for them to bite into you and ingest?

[coffeekitty.livejournal.com]

do you want that much drug in your system for them to bite into you and ingest?

given that i work with bunches and gobs of toxic, radioactive, and infectious stuff for a living, i figure that it'd probably be lost in the noise :-)