Oh, this is good news!! Last year we had the exact same problem. We treated ourselves for three days with various poisons and found LIVE lice every time. I was ready to cry the third day. I found a different solution than you did, using Vasoline to suffocate both eggs and lice. That’s how I treated my daughter, but I ended up shaving my own head. I even wrote a poem (actually a parody of Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock.) about it:
Rape of the Locks
An Abbreviated Parody
What dire solutions from hopeless Causes spring;
what mighty Contests arise from tiny things?
I sing this verse of L__, amuse they do,
at least for others who can safely view
the whole charade from a wider berth,
while tiny eggs hatch forth in birth.
Say, what strange motive, Goddess! could have lead
our Heroine, Grace, to shave her head,
while Jelly spared her little one
a burning scalp from fiery sun?
The bright sun pierced the shimmering day
and opened the Shih Tzu’s eyes, so gray.
His throat let go a gentle bark,
and looked toward light defeating dark.
The clock chimed eight; the lady lay sleeping
until the lap-dog stood at the door weeping.
Only then she opened her eyes, so green;
the world rudely invaded her dreams.
Her ruddy cheeks and flaxen curls belied
a terrible thing that she soon must hide.
Dear reader, for those who may never have seen
such itching and scratching, followed by screams,
a thousand inhabitants on your own head
hatching and biting, rousing you from bed
to fruitlessly try to search in the mirror
for the source of itching and how it gets nearer
around the crown and behind the ears,
and how could you sleep, so filled with fears?
For mothers of school-aged children know
what causes such itching on heads high and low.
And thus Grace saw her child start to itch;
her fingers scratched, her ears did twitch.
Grace searched in the sunlight ‘tween each shaft of hair;
her daughter sat, sullen, unable to bear
the tedious search , the shameful knowing,
to school, which she loved, there’d be no going.
At last Grace found what she was looking for,
a dastardly louse perched over a pore.
O, heaven knows, though early, the day was over
for her and the child and the lap-dog Rover.
For armies of lice had slowly advanced
and lurked on two heads in warrior stance,
waiting, at last, for the battle to start
‘tween chemical treatment and Evolution’s art.
The race had been waiting at least twenty years
for a chance to evolve past such fleeting fears;
to conquer mankind’s scientific advances;
to survive the assault and thwart man’s chances
to live without lousy pestilence,
to live parasite-free in ignorance.
And so Grace tried to oust the heathens,
to relieve the itching, among other reasons.
In the kitchen, laid out, and neatly arranged,
her weapons of combat: water on the range;
a small-toothed comb to remove the nits,
and a bottle of poison that came in a kit.
The water was boiling for hair-bands and combs,
accoutrements of beauty which every girl owns.
And so the child sat with saturated head,
while her mother await the lice to be dead.
Grace saw, combing out the nits that night,
what she could not believe, and gave her a fright.
For there, in a part of her daughter’s head,
wiggled a live louse that should’ve been dead!
She’d heard of this thing, the resistant louse
but now it was happening, and in her own house!
What could she do, her money she’d spent
on the damned useless poison, now she was bent
out of shape. Frustrated, her face contorted,
her mouth opened wide, tears fell, and she snorted.
For what is a poor young mother to do,
when faced with this thing? Well, I’ll tell you.
In the blink of an eye, she went to the ‘Net,
searched for a solution, which she did get.
She went to the bathroom, her clippers retrieved,
but the child hid her head and begged for reprieve.
“These are not for you,” our Grace, she said,
“I’m using these to shave my own head.”
“But what of me?” Cried the child, “What to do?”
“Oh,” said her mommy, “I have plans for you.”
Grace stood with eyes twinkling, a jar in her hand,
of Petroleum Jelly, asked her child to stand
as still as she could while into her hair
Grace slowly worked Vaseline into a glare,
a glorious, nasty, suffocating coat.
“It takes three hours,” Grace did quote,
“so put on this bonnet, and sit still, please.”
She was sure it would work but felt weak in the knees.
For now it was her turn to work on her hair,
and another solution would have to work there.
She remembered her clippers and their merging fate
and moved to the bedroom, before it was too late.
It did not take her long to decide against
using Vaseline, but her muscles tensed
to think of her curls, admired by all,
lying shorn on the floor after their fall.
“The battle!” She cried, “It costs too much!
I’ll have no use for these ribbons and such!”
But she was stoic, she was finally brave;
her hands took the clippers and started to shave.
When it was all over she laid down and wept,
plucked a curl from the pile, which she wanted kept
in a little glass frame, to remind her forever
of the rape of her curls by lice that were clever.
The battle she won, the vermin died out,
never to return, she had little doubt.
Her baldness protected her scalp from lice
and, surprisingly, made her face look nice,
or so they said, her generous friends,
who she knew she couldn’t believe, in the end.
(If anyone wants specific instructions on using Vasoline to kill lice, let me know. I’ll post it here. It’s a one-day treatment and I have methods to remove the Vasoline from heads the same day.)
