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Nicholas Brown’s “The Bedbug Chronicles: Part 6″ sounds pretty familiar

nobugsonme — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:42:58 +0000

There’s a new update to Nicholas Brown’s bed bug journal on the Huffington Post today, and it takes us through the 39th day of living with bed bugs during treatment.

In this installment, we learn that bed bugs are taking a significant toll on Brown’s self-identity and social life:

Despite my anger, even our bug-laden living situation is finally normalizing. This process started first as a change in identity: I now think of myself as ‘the guy with bedbugs.’ It’s how I introduce myself. Maybe it’s not the first thing I say, but it will come up in the first five minutes of a conversation. I am taking an acting class and in the first session I said “hey, I am Nick and I have bedbugs,” as if I was in some particularly gross AA session. When I hear someone mention bedbugs in a conversation at a table next to me, I feel obliged to chime in.

They’re also making home very disorganized and uncomfortable, no small problem for someone whose office is at home. Things are not where they used to be; instead, they’re in bags all over the place:

While I am tempted to reassemble my room and my office (which are the same place), I realize there is every chance that the bugs will be back again so I have stopped trying to create a livable space and now just settle for someplace with interior heating.

We also learn that Brown still has bed bugs, well past the 30-day window landlords are given to eliminate bed bugs, under local housing laws. It is not unusual for landlords to need more time, though. Turns out, there are other reasons to be angry at the landlord:

Day 39

Our landlord, we discovered today, knew this apartment had bugs. The previous tenants moved out because of the bedbugs. The whole building - minus our apartment - was sprayed for bedbugs in the months after we moved in. No one mentioned this to us.

Isn’t this illegal? As I commented on the paragraph above, on Nicholas Brown’s blog, this should be illegal. Landlords should not be able to rent out an apartment that is known to be infested with bed bugs, to an unsuspecting tenant. I have a suspicion, however, that it already violates the housing laws. If any NYC rental housing experts are reading this, perhaps they could clarify.

Moreover, if the entire building except one apartment was being treated, any experienced PCO and even the landlord should realize that this might drive even more bed bugs into this unit.

What strikes me most about Brown’s saga, through these six installments, is how very typical it is. We at bedbugger.com have heard it all many times. While I am horrified to hear Brown’s tale, I thank him for sharing it in such a public medium.

By doing so, he may just convey the mess that bed bugs create in one’s life, as well as how easy it is to get them, and how very difficult it is to get rid of them, to those not yet in the know. And that recognition, my friends, is the first step in getting everyone else to help us fight the problem.

Last week’s Town Hall Meeting in Cincinnati

nobugsonme — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:04:44 +0000

It’s a week later, but I did want to comment on the media’s follow-up from last week’s Town Hall Meeting in Cincinnati, about the bed bug problem.

WCPO.com’s Lynn Groud reported on the event last Monday. Hundreds of bed bug sufferers turned out. One speaker said:

“For many older adults, they are a 24-hour a day problem. Their homes are so infested they are visible during the day, crawling on the older adult, crawling on the walls,” said one speaker.

City, county and state leaders answered questions, acknowledging that bed bugs are multiplying and moving in to more and more homes at an alarming rate.

“Some of the bed bugs will go into the mattress, they will put their eggs into the mattress,” said Ken Hippner, of Command Pest Management. “So, we go out and kill what we can see – then go weeks or months later – and the eggs hatch and have new bed bugs emerging.”

But hiring an exterminator can cost hundreds of dollars – and many at the town meeting were hoping the city would offer more help.

“That’s what I want to know,” said Collins. “Are they gonna come out and do this free, because I can’t afford it and neither can these poor people.”

That’s what we want to know too!

WCPO reports that the Cincinnati Bed Bug Task Force “are planning an emergency meeting and hope to come back in December with more solutions.” Lets hope financial assistance for landlords and homeowners is at the top of the list.

Click to watch WCPO.com’s video or read the article.

However, one reader, entoman, apparently attended the event, and had this to say:

entoman said:

November 6th, 2007 at 10:19 am edit

The Bed Bug Town Hall meeting was very confusing. Obviously the people on the Bed Bug Task Force did not compare notes before they presented their information. The Commissioner of Cincinnati Health Department stated you do not need a professional, you need an integrated plan that would include the use of soap and water. Another official stated temperatures of 98 degees will kill all bed bugs. Even another stated that pesticides do not work. Hamilton County Health Director said to sleep with the lights on (this would prevent bed bugs from biting). He also said to use 90% isopropyl alcohol (there are legal issues with this in Ohio). The information pamphlets that were handed out contradicted all of this and said home remedies do not work.

The only positive thing is that Susan Jones from Ohio State is on the Task Force. Dr. Jones is known for her research with termites but is starting to get into bed bugs. Hopefully she will be the voice of reason.

As I said in the other thread, I really appreciate having the perspective of an actual attendee (and one who is, judging from his pseudonym and his comments, an entomologist). The recommendations quoted above are a reason why government officials need to have all their ducks in a row, when it comes to speaking to the public about bed bugs. Bed bug experts need to be involved in the planning, and officials need to get their story straight as far as what to recommend and what not to recommend. Having pamphlets that recommend one thing and speakers suggesting the opposite is not going to help attendees fight their bed bugs.

Public education around bed bugs is needed for consumers, but to make a difference, and avoid confusion, we have to start by educating the people who are working in government and social services.

The Huffington Post: Nicholas Brown’s bed bugs, volumes 3 and 4

nobugsonme — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 07:00:07 +0000

Somehow I got behind on Nicholas Brown’s bed bug saga; two more installments have appeared.

He posted volume 3 last week, which chronicles the “laundry and first treatment” phase. Somewhat unconventionally, Brown as his roommates Katherine and Jihad had not done much prep before their PCO showed up. He was kind enough to come back a few hours later, and so the team flew into motion. Brown’s style is engaging and the laundromat saga, in which the pushy ladies of the laundromat are put in their places, is fairly fun reading:

Our neighborhood has relatively few Laundromats and almost no one has a washer and dryer in-building, resulting in an atmosphere of intense and sometimes uncomfortably physical competition for the few available dryers. The already charged atmosphere is made particularly dangerous at our local Laundromat by a series of heavyset neighborhood Grand dames who are willing to throw their weight around. When I walked into the Laundromat, Katherine was facing down one such woman who had taken her clothes out of a washer and thrown them on the floor.

“What, you want to use all the dryers here at once!” the woman said

“Actually, yes.”

“Your clothes are dry.”

“They have bugs,” Katherine said.

Apparently she hadn’t mentioned this earlier. The effect was satisfying. Most people took at least a small step back and the grand dame who had been facing us down retreated completely. One woman, who had been rummaging through our clothes in an attempt to clear a dryer for herself, jerked her hands back so rapidly and with so much revulsion that it looked like the beginnings of an epileptic fit.

Volume 3 concludes with the “wait and be bait” period following the first treatment.

Volume 4 details various “crackpot” ideas for fighting bed bugs. My only critique would be that he nixes the idea of freezing books (when, in fact, freezing is a legit method for killing bed bugs), and freezes his VCR instead (note: I would not do this with electronics).

What Brown describes well is the experimental nature of so many solutions bed bug victims concoct. The last time people in New York City commonly had to deal with bed bugs was before World War II. Some of the folk remedies of that time worked and were dangerous, others probably did not work. In 2007, we are luckier than our ancestors; we have resealable bags, washing and drying machines, zipped encasements. Information travels faster now, but so does misinformation. Caveat bedbugger.

Brown also captures well the stress of life during bed bug wartime. By day 24 he says,

Our nerves are on edge. While it’s true that bedbugs generally fall into the category of ‘pests,’ it is underreported that they are also life-changing experiences. It is said that the three most stressful times in life surround divorces, moves, and new children. Bedbugs are surely a close fourth.

If I forget to take out the garbage one morning, I come home to find an angry Katherine. If I Jihad or Katherine move my things, I become irrationally angry. We lurk about the apartment during the day waiting to explode at one another. We are all angry at the creatures, but it is very hard to take out fury on an insect so we target snide remarks and well-timed sighs at one another instead. The emotionally traumatizing effects of these creatures are probably foreign to anyone who has not had them, but bystanders beware: bedbug victims are emotional landmines. Do not misstep near us.

Wise words. I hope Brown and Company have gotten a follow-up treatment 10-14 days after their first treatment. Judging from his description of the bed frame, they had a lot of bed bugs. From what we hear, one treatment is rarely enough, even in lighter cases.

Like the saga of Amanda’s bed bugs over at Apartment Therapy, Brown’s story is compelling reading. Like Amanda, he also introduces an unsuspecting new audience to the horrors of dealing with bed bugs, that we here at Bedbugger.com are all too familiar with. Some of the comments on the earlier installments are a healthy reminder that the vast majority of folks still are blissfully ignorant about bed bugs (a double-edged sword if ever there was one).

I don’t think we ever got the final update on Amanda, unless I missed it? Last entry I saw was #8, in which after two treatments, her bed bugs were “back.” (By back, I mean, they “never entirely left.”)