The Bedbug Chronicles

Sleepless nights come and go

2008-11-11T19:07:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a long haul. Once again we spent our evening preparing the house for another exterminator visit. Husband says they have a 30 day guarantee that their services will, well, exterminate. given that they didn't really exterminate last time in as much as they scattered the bugs out of the walls and the woodwork, and WE exterminated them by catching them...their guarantee isn't working YET. They still have 3 more weeks to get these guys blasted. From everything I've read online, which is really the only place to find verifiable and useful information about them, they usually take months and even years to eradicate due to numerous factors. So good luck to them. They're coming tomorrow to tear up the carpets and blast underneath them. So we once again are packing all of our things into boxes and bags. What little we have left of our things that haven't been either thrown out or set aside for quarantine (one year in quarantine...blah). Its so weird living out of rubbermaid bins and garbage bags.

I struggled driving to work the past couple of mornings. I have always had a tendency to feel sleepy while driving even when I've been well rested, so these sleepless nights have made my driving stressful. I kept the heat off this morning and blared the radio the whole way in. Its hard to sleep well when you wake up at 3, 4, or 5 a.m. and realize that its bed bug hunting hour and they could be crawling in your bed or on you. I kept waking up and sitting up and throwing the covers back, meticulously checking for signs of bugs. Even though our clothes are sanitized and kept in bins sitting in pans of water, I still check and shake out my clothes before I get dressed. We've started doing all these quirky things lately that don't really seem silly anymore now that we've realized how complicated bed bugs are. We put germ-Ex on our feet before getting into bed in case we stepped across a bug or bug eggs. We taped saran wrap with duct tape over top of our ceiling heating vents in case bugs crawled in and fell back out on top of our bed at night. We use duct tape and vaseline to surround things like closet rods for the few clothes we have left hanging up. Actually I am thinking about just stuffing my work clothes into the bins with the rest of the clothes, since husband saw a bug crawling on his shirt the other morning as it hung in the closet. Who cares if I show up at work wrinkled. Co-workers already think I'm weird enough as it is, and know somethings up although I will never be able to tell them about this nightmare. We even wrapped our door frame with sticky tape to serve as a feeble barrier to contain them to the bedroom. We haven't actually found a bug outside of the bedroom YET but that doesn't mean that they haven't traveled out or won't try to in the future.

Well. Time to go check the bed one more time before crawling in. Not that it makes me feel any better at this point. Because I know they could very well just crawl out from some unseen hiding spot at some point during the night, anyway.

2008-11-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

Well our morale is back down again. What a way to wake up...alarm
goes off, sit up, immediately spot a bed bug crawling across your
pillow. Well, lets just say I fairly leaped out of bed this morning.
Husband got rid of it. Then we found another bug crawling on the sheets
of my side of the bed. I felt itchy for a few hours after waking up
like that. And it got rid of my appetite which had been starting to
return to normal after having a zero bug sighting day. I'm not so
much nauseated at the bugs in as much as it just stresses my body out
and that in turn destroys any desire I have to eat.

Work is my haven. I am happy to be distracted from it while at work,
and to be busy so I don't have time to dwell on it or think about it.
My co-workers are starting to ask me what is wrong and why I look like
I am so tired and down all the time lately. There's no way I can say
anything, other than, "I have a few issues at home I am dealing with
right now, I can't talk about it" because the truth would turn into
gossip that would spread like wildfire. A few of our close friends
know but it makes me feel uneasy that some of them know. Some people
I know don't judge us and aren't put off at all by this whole bug
issue, but have this fear that some people would think its disgusting
and we must have a dirty, disgusting apartment. Of course nobody has
said anything, and our friends are awesome people, but its just a
stigma that goes with it, sort of like head lice. Its just not
something you necessarily care for certain people to know.

Husband called the pest people this morning to tell them of all the recent
bug activity. They said that its not protocol to come on Wednesdays
but they will come out wed. and pull up the edges of our carpet and
treat underneath of it, all around the perimeter of the room, as well
as do the adjacent room, the spare bedroom. I hope it works. In the
meantime I really want to find a new bed frame because despite ours
getting soaked in pesticides and vacuumed/sprayed with lysol, there are
still bugs coming out of the woodwork. We can isolate the bed but
we'll still get bit if the source is our bed frame.

Hope for at least one day...

2008-11-10T14:17:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we woke up and no sign of bed bugs. No new bites yet. We
decided to go grocery shopping and we also got a futon style couch for
the living room. We will put it up on bricks in pans of water
just to keep it safe should any bugs travel to the living room, but
that is highly unlikely. The exterminator said it was fine to get a
couch and that he could even spray the bottom of it for us if we would
like him to. When we got back from shopping we checked the bed and
glue traps and water pans. No signs of bugs whatsoever. We watched a
movie on our living room floor and checked again before going to bed.
Still no bugs. It made me so happy to not see anything in the bed
before we got in it.

Today was also bug sighting free and no new bites appearing.

They're baaack

2008-11-10T14:13:00.000-08:00

Well. I went over to the bed a couple hours ago to lay there and
watch a movie. There was a bedbug sitting right there on my pillow,
plain as day. I freaked. Husband captured it. Then we stripped the bed.
We found one more in the covers. We took the laundry down to the
dryer and flipped up the mattress, spraying the bedframe, mattress,
all around it with lysol for good measure. We taped saran wrap up
above the bed covering the 2 ceiling vents in case the bugs were
dropping from there. A half hour later I walked back in to look at
the bed. There was a bed bug on the mattress cover. A while later we
found one on the wall. Then a few minutes later, another one on the
bed protector. This is getting rather disheartening. They must be
coming out of the woodwork, literally. We will be buying a new bed
frame tomorrow. I will look all day if I have to, to find one that we
can use to put up on the moats again and hope that this time our bed
will be isolated from the bugs.

Blah. Off to check the bed one more time and get the laundry out.
This is unbelievable.

extermination day

2008-11-10T14:11:00.000-08:00

Well hello everyone. I took yesterday off as a sick day. I was feeling
quite sick from all this so it wasn't a stretch. We took
the apartment apart yesterday. We took all the books and movies and
games and everything off the living room shelves and entertainment
center/coffee tables. We threw out the couches and our rocker and any
upholstered furniture. We moved all the furniture away from the walls
and took apart both beds. We took all our clothes, blankets, towels,
shoes, etc in the cars to the laundromat to get dried. The pest
people came at noon and I stayed there to ask questions while my husband got
a head start at the laundromat with all our clothes. They said they
were bringing out the big guns for this. The exterminator told me he
even mixed up the chemicals extra strong...hopefully not enough to
cause us to grow an extra head though. He approved of one type of
bedbug cover we had bought for the one in the spare bedroom but not
the ones on our bed so my husband and I are getting new covers for those. We
have to order them from offline though because they weren't in stock
at Bed Bath and Beyond, which is the only place we can buy those
special covers around here. They told us we did a great job at getting
the apartment ready for the treatment and it was a good thing we had
the glue traps out or we would have taken a lot longer to notice the
bugs. He also said we caught it before it became a much worse
infestation.

We did laundry and price shopped for a new couch. We won't get one
until this whole situation calms down though. For now we just have 2
wooden chairs in the living room.

When we came back from doing all the laundry it was about 7pm. We
walked in and it smelled like it had definitely been treated with
chemicals. Then we went into the bedroom and everything had been
moved around, we could see that they had treated everything too
because there was this shiney, still sticky residue on everything and
the carpet was damp around the baseboards. A couple of the dresser
drawers still had little puddles of liquid in the bottom of them.
They certainly went all out. We decided to put back together some of
the furniture/move it back to where it was before we brought in our
clothes. So we did the living room first--put the books and movies
back on the shelves. Then we moved the stuff in the kitchen, spare
room, then we went into the bedroom and started figuring out what to
do. We decided to put the bed back on the frame since it had been
thoroughly treated and then set it on the bed risers in the moats.
But while we were standing there talking I noticed a spot on one of
the mattresses leaning against the wall. I shuddered. No way...they
were supposed to be dead...took a closer look....please Lord, no....it
was a bed bug. A very much alive one. I squealed "BUG!" and my husband
walked over and said, "I can't believe it. They are not supposed to be
alive now, they said they'd all be dead!" and we got rid of it. Then
I looked around the room and saw a spot on the wall. Another bed bug,
high up on the wall. Really weird behavior from them, especially
since the lights were blaring and supposedly they don't like lights or
come out during the day. Then we saw another one RIGHT OVER OUR HEADS
on the ceiling. I had to help my husband get a couple off the surface because
they sort of stuck to it and didn't want to come off. It was really
traumatizing to come home to a bedroom with them crawling all over the
walls and ceiling. I didn't want them falling onto our heads. I told
him we should move t he bed away from the ceiling vent in case one
crawled into it and then fell back out at night onto our bed. I think
we found 3 on the ceiling and 5 on the walls. They were trying to get
away from the poison, I think. Anyway we decided it wasn't safe to
bring in the clothes so they are still in the cars. My car smells
like stinky feet because I have all our shoes in my car.

We did put 2 of those clear plastic storage drawers inside of bigger
bins filled with water so that we each have 2 little drawers that are
safe for clothes. The moats seem to keep anything from getting into
stuff because we have found a couple bugs in our bed moats in the past
2 days. We are hoping there are no bugs on our bed frame because that
should cure the problem eventually, if we can just make sure there are
none on the bed ALREADY we can PREVENT them from coming up via the
moats. If we get bites in the next week or so, or find any in the
sheets....we will buy a new bed frame. We also threw out our box
spring because we figured that was one more place for them to hide and
one big clunky thing we had to move around every time we checked the
bed for bugs so my husband went to Lowes to get more wood slats and now we
just have the mattress on slats.

Last night in my dreams I felt something really itchy on my ankle. I'm
not sure if I dreamed the itch or if it was real. Today that ankle
itches in the same spot but I don't see a red mark yet so I'm not sure
if its a bite or not.

I've started getting used to the idea that there may very well be bugs
in our bed even if we have pest people treat the frame, wash the
linens, use the protective covers, and keep it on moats. We can do
all that but there still could be bugs there somehow, and every night
they may very well come out and bite us. I still sleep lightly but
I've at least been sleeping-- the past 2 nights were better. I'm
getting used to the fact that it is somewhat out of our control and we
just have to deal with it.

Its still depressing though. We're trying to just live normally and
things but things definitely don't LOOK or seem normal, haha.

the calm before the storm...

2008-11-10T14:06:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer:
I took an email update sent to family and removed any personal information/names from it for privacy.

Hi guys...I already sent mom an email so you probably already know,
I'm sure I've freaked her out thoroughly. :( I feel bad on top of
everything that now we can't have anyone over anymore and we will have
to sterilize our clothes, backpacks, and anything else we take with us
if we visit and let you have some peace of mind about us visiting.
Its definite now. We have a bedbug infestation. Don't worry about
you having caught them from us or anything, they don't travel on human
beings and they hide during the day. The will only hide in or close
to the bed that we sleep in, so there shouldn't be any reason why
anyone but us has them right now. The exterminators are coming on
thursday. I've slept a few hours in the past couple of nights since
when I saw the first bug dead on the sticky glue traps we had had by
our bed posts. At first I almost went into shock, sort of like when
you think you've forgotten a paper that you need to turn in to pass a
class, I felt that awful sick feeling and didn't eat a THING for hours
because I constantly thought I might throw up. Now I just feel
constantly depressed. We went out and spent almost 300$ on bed bug
proof bedding encasements. Our pillows, boxspring, mattress and all
are all covered with this vinyl type material (which isn't helping me
sleep any...my head feels like its slipping off the pillow) and our
bed is sitting on just a plain metal frame (we took apart the bed,
vacumed it, and set it away from our bed in case there are any bugs
hiding in it somehow. Then we put the frame on bed risers coated with
double sided sticky tape. Then we put the risers in a pan of water
because the bugs can't swim....which is true from our experience so
far. We've been doing load after load of laundry. From when I come
home from work I've been doing laundry until about 9, and running the
vacuum also. We've done at least 10 loads in the dryer (the dryer
heat will kill any bugs) and there's a lot more to do. Once stuff is
sterilized we've been putting it into garbage bags and then into
rubbermaid bins and stacking it all in the living room. We are
clearing out our entire closet and dressers contents and sterilizing
them before the exterminators come on thursday so that we can put
everything back after they treat it with stuff.

I know things could always be worse but its so hard to think of things
that are worse when I can't even get my head around this. Our bed
will have to be like this for a year because they can go that long
without biting. You guys won't be able to come down and visit for at
least a year. Our puppy will have to sleep every night in our kitchen
for the next year because I don't want it getting bitten or becoming a
host to the bed bugs. We won't have full peace of mind about it for a
year. I haven't been sleeping well so I feel exhausted on top of
feeling still sickened and depressed. To top it all off, despite going
to bed thinking of pleasant thoughts, I have had 2 nightmares each
night about BUGS crawling on me. This afternoon I noticed 2 new welts
on my one arm, which is just great right? and so when I got home I
flipped the sheets up and checked the bed for bugs. I didn't find any
but now I'm afraid there might be some that somehow got in the bed
after we "bug proofed" it and so now to ease my conscience I'm going
to gather up all the blankets and sheets and doing more laundry. I
feel like we're bearing this secret burden that nobody else knows
about or could share sympathy with us because its so disgusting and we
can't tell anyone about it. I wish we could just move away but that
wouldn't make any sense because the bed bugs would likely somehow go
with us. Unless of course we sold everything we had and started fresh
with nothing. And many people who have had infestations they couldn't
control have done just that, from what I've read online on solutions
for getting rid of the problem.

I had started feeling better after we "bug proofed" the bed but now
that I have the 2 new bites 2 days after we did it, I know that they
could be old, or they could be fresh. I feel creepy crawly just
thinking about it. I kept waking up last night every hour or so
afraid that something had just bit me or I had felt something crawl
across my skin. I'm so weary of this already and its only been the
first 2 days. I read online that some bites take 2-3 days to show up
but how would I know if they were old or new. I'll just have to wash
everythign on the bed, lift up the mattress and check underneath,
check the boxsprings, etc and try to make sure nothing is crawling
around. Its so frustrating because they can start out so small that
you really can't see them, so even checking won't make me totally feel
better. May be I should just go sleep in the car for the next few
nights...oh wait, I live in a city.

Sorry if this whole email grossed you out. But in case you were
wondering why I haven't written an email for a while, and probably
won't be writing another one for a while, this is why.
I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel of this one. I don't
understand what purpose this has for our lives right now and I can't
see the good God is going to bring out of it, and don't know how to
try yet. I just feel like crying all the time, but I can't. I'm too
numb.

Before the extermination

2008-11-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

Thursday. Extermination day.

The past few days were awful. I have several new welts on my arms. We keep finding them in the sheets and even though our bed is on risers in pans of water, it doesn't seem to do much good. They must be harboring in the wood frame.

We found 8 of them this morning, a few of them were
alive and some were dead. :( We have a lot of work to do. We're headed out right now
to buy garbage bags, go to the laundromat, and buy mattress
protectors. I'm over the initial sick feeling but now I just feel
depressed, ugh.

When the troubles began...

2008-11-10T13:29:00.000-08:00

We don't know when it started or what brought them here. We certainly didn't bring them with us. We saw the first one in August 2008, crawling on my husband's shorts. We walked to the bathroom to flush it, and as we did, I saw something drop from the ceiling and land on his head. Another identical bug, which we also flushed. I had a weird feeling about it because I've seen many bugs but never ones like these, so I went to the computer and googled it. They looked disturbingly and shockingly like bed bugs. We couldn't believe it was actually bed bugs...I think the truth was too awful to accept at that point, so we rationalized that they must have been ticks or beetles. But we called pest control anyway, which thankfully our apartment takes care of for us. They came out and sprayed. We emptied all the dressers in the bedroom and they sprayed down all the furniture. We bagged some clothes, washed and dried most of them but not all. When they were done we put everything back together. We checked our glue traps under the bed and vacumed around 1-2 times per week. Didn't see any bugs for another three months. Fast forward to last week. I woke up one morning with a tiny speck of blood on my pillow. I got a sick feeling. I just knew. I looked at my arm which I had slept with thrown over my pillow. A red welt similar to a mosquito bite. I checked under the bed at the glue traps, and there was the horrifing truth. Bed bugs. several of them, on each glue trap. Panic set in and I wanted to faint, scream, or throw up but just couldn't. I just called in my husband to show him the evidence, and we called pest control. They would come in four days, on thursday. In the meantime, we went out to bed bath and beyond and bought bed covers for the mattress, box spring, and each pillow. Dried all the bedding on high heat. Took the bed apart and vacumed the frame piece by pice. Hoped for the best and looked forward to thursday.