Do i have bedbugs or am I paranoid and this is something I have to live with.

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Do i have bedbugs or am I paranoid and this is something I have to live with.

(2 posts)

fr0st003

newbite
Joined: Oct '09
Posts: 1

Posted 3 weeks ago
Thu Oct 29 2009 3:53:51
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Ok so heres the short version of the story.

I move into apartment, new room mate starts getting bitten, by what are thought to be mosquitos(this was in august). We decided without finding any evidence it must be bedbugs and she only gets bit while sleeping. Pest control guy comes says he cant see anything but it is possible. We have him return and spray her entire room. While she is stay at friends house I decide to check on room, and low and behold I found a dead bedbug confirmed definite yep its a bedbug. We toss everything to the street that was in her room, she had a cheap futon and some random other items she didnt mind tossing as she keeps most of her stuff in closet. So her room is empty and she has been sleeping on an air mattress in the floor since. No bites that I know of or she knows of.

Being the paranoid psycho that I am everything in my room that is able to either bagged or boxed is, I spent a small fortune on mattress covers pillow covers, space bags, you name it. My stuff is all sealed and once a week for the past 3 months I remove everything from my dresser and spray rubbing alcohol and clean and flip my mattress etc etc. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up turn all my lights on flip my bed and do all that craziness. About 2 weeks ago I notice a pimple on my inner thigh and then a few days later another and then like a week later another so over the period of 2 weeks I got this nice little row of ingrown hairs(this feeds my paranoia). I am mindful I have very thick hair and I have been riding bike quite a bit prior to it get cold and those pimples are right where they should be, well they are more like ingrown hairs from my pants chaffing my leg, but point being I have a line of them. Now fast forward to this week I haven't had anything, nor have I been biking tonight after a longer session at the computer doing work than I normally would be I felt that soft sweet spot, right where my butt cheek meets my leg and I had 2 or so little welts kinda feels like a little swollen rash, and this too happens to be right where my underwear elastic wraps around my leg and where I would normally sweat.

My questions are these, could these.
1) My room is about 500 ft away from my room mates she lives in the back room of the house and never comes towards my side, could they migrate that far?
2) Would she be more prone to being bitting sleeping on the floor?
3) I have had the Pest control team come 3 times and spray and explore the apartment moving all the furniture and making my life a living hell, only to find nothing, srpay this chemical all over the place, make me take apart my bed(Which I dont know how many more times I can do before I strip the bolts) etc etc. Is there another way I can prove to myself I dont have them? The pest control guys dont convince me ever.
4) And lastly do bedbugs try and bite open skin like arms or legs, or skin that lies under elastic bands?

Sorry for the poor grammar and typos its 4:40am and I just got done doing a full shake down of my room. Will I ever be sane, I swear the day I see a life bedbug I am going to shriek and scream like a little girl, the only one I have seen was dead.
3rdfriggintime

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Joined: Oct '09
Posts: 2

Posted 3 weeks ago
Thu Oct 29 2009 23:11:24
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I'm certainly no expert but I will add my previous post to this site. Everything I did in that has been by learning from the internet. As for the pimples, do they itch? If they do, then it must be bedbugs. Are you paraniod? No, everyone is paranoid once they first experiance bed bugs. It slowly goes away once you fix the problem.

1) Yes, they'll move when the group/colony gets too big and when they haven't eaten for a while (no host). The distance, I'm sure. They can live for something like 30 days without food and can travel far to find it.

2) I don't think it matters. If the bugs are there, they will find her.

3) Again, if the bite itch, I think you have them. If not, stop worrying.

4) For the most part they seem to like the lower torso, sometimes upper. It appears that they rarely bite the head. I've been mostly bitton on the legs in the past but my recent ones have been under my shorts and yes, one under where the elastic band was.

If you have bed bugs, I think spray and fogging would be best. If you do read the instructions on the products carefully. Be sure to protect all food and pets prior. Wash all exposed clthes after. Please respond.

My post from another forum:
I've survived these bloodsuckers twice now and am preparing for a third time. I lived at my brother's house about 12 years ago when he awoke to something crawling over him and had blood on his arm (must have squished one). His waterbed (bed bugs like heat) was full of what we later found to be bed bugs..I didn't think they existed until then. We also found a lesser amount in my waterbed. After alot of internet research, we found that they could be beat by spraying all baseboards, matresses, and crevises with a product containing pyrethins and fogging with the same. We did this with a spray product from Home Depot manufactured by a company called Safer and I forget who made the fogger. It worked but we still couldn't sleep so we called in an exterminator who agreed we had won and charged us about $500. That was the last until about a year ago my wife and I came home to our house after a vacation in NH. We actually had felt the bugs on us in the hotel that night but felt we could be safe as we kept our clothes away from the beds and immediately washed all clothes in non chlorine bleach upon return. My wife was a little less cautious and tossed a bag on the couch. I like to sleep on the couch some Sat nights (It's like camping ;) after coming in late and found I was again getting bitten...I did more research. We threw the couch, recliner, and chair out on the back porch for two nights where it was rain free and below freezing. End of problem again....

We returned from a nice hotel in NH a couple of weeks ago and I awoke today to my 2nd and 3rd itchy bite. I haven't been able to find anything at Home Depot so I stopped in at a Lowes. I found that HOT SHOT IS NOW SELLING A BED BUG AND FLEE SPRAY AND A BED BUG AND FLEE FOGGER, both containing Pyrethins....YAHOO! It appears to be isolated to our bedroom right now so the plan is this weekend to close the room after spraying and fogging. I'll tilt the mattresses against the walls, open all drawers and make sure that all clothes will be exposed to the fog. We'll know if they are gone if we get no more bites. I have heard that some people do not show signs of the bites but we certainly do now (we didn't originally). My wife will be sleeping on the couch until afterwards and I'll stay in the room as the bait until then. These buggers are known to move to other areas if they cannot find a host. They are also not known to carry any diseases. We'll have to wash all exposed clothes afterwards but I'm confident that we'll beat them again. We are seriously considering never staying in another hotel again. Another tip I've learned from another couple who went through this in their log cabin home. Do not allow bird nests to be built that contact your home. Bed bugs like these, not that they feed from the birds but because they are warm. They then find an entry point into your warmer home. Hope this helps someone else.

Jim