January 5, 2000
'Lice doctor' makes nit-picky house calls
Interlochen resident starts business that delouses children and homes
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Tammy Sauve in not a squeamish woman.
The Interlochen resident does, however, have an entrepreneurial bent and a creative mind. Putting the two together, she recently launched a business that could go straight to the hearts of parents of school-aged children. Billing herself as the head lice doctor, Sauve's Nit It Out business will do just what is sounds like- delouse kids and their homes.
A tedious but crucial portion of controlling head lice, the hours of combing to get out every tiny egg, or nit, are an unwelcome task for an unwelcome condition. Without it, however, the lice flourish and spread, compounding the problem for everyone in a child's home or classroom.
And Sauve knows what she is talking about from firsthand experience.
"I got the idea from when my neighbors helped me with my daughters and I helped others," said Sauve, who moved to Interlochen from Houghton Lake in August. "You have to go strand by strand through the hair to remove every egg attached to the hairshaft, and there's a lot of working parents who don't have the time to do this kind of procedure."
Sauve will also attack the lice where they lay in wait for the next head: on furniture, stuffed toys, clothes, pillows and bedding, vacuuming and scrubbing them away. Although lice do not live long without a human head to chomp on, they can transfer from one person to another via these items. (Their reputation for flying or jumping from one person to another is unfounded, however.) Sleepovers among friends can also spread the pests if one child has them.
While head lice are not a health problem, they can definitely be a nuisance. Now considered almost a childhood rite of passage, parents still may overreact and feel shamed when their kids wind up with them. Shame and silence will not get the job done, and promptly treating this common pest is the best bet for eradicating them.
"Head lice is just one of those things that is all over, it is not anything more than it is," said MaryEllen Sanok, a school nurse with Traverse City Area Public Schools who oversees 10 elementary schools. "Even people who are quite educated don't realize it is more of a nuisance than anything, it is not shameful."
Head lice are difficult to get rid of if treatment is not vigilant. Some strains of lice today are immune to the common pesticides available in over-the-counter shampoos, so the most important element to controlling them is thorough removal - nit picking, as it were. Taking hours to comb and check every strand of hair can seem like a thankless task, but it is the only way to ensure that a child become lice free.
"Eggs glue themselves to the hair and if you miss even one, they can infest all over again," said Lori Weslowski, a public health nurse with the Grand Traverse County Health Department. "Lice are a year-round problem and are difficult to get rid of."
Traverse City Area Public Schools has a no-nit policy. Any child who is found to have head lice is sent home for treatment. Before they can return to school, they must be rechecked to ensure that there are not any nits remaining in the hair. Even one means back to square one and home again for another treatment.
The best way to deal with head lice is to prevent them in the first place, said Sanok. Teaching children what they can share and not share among themselves is a big step.
"People really need to educate their children to not use other people's combs, brushes, hats or scarves," Savok said. "When they take their coat off, they should put it in their locker and not put it down on top of other coats. Prevention is the most economical and time-saving way to deal with head lice."