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Interesting "It happened to me" ALERT! Read!
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nervousbreakdown09
newbite
Joined: Sep '09
Posts: 9offline
Posted 3 years ago
Fri Nov 20 2009 18:47:23
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Hello there.
I have not been on here in awhile but I wanted to come back on and share my story because I think it might help many people out there who might be going through what I just went through over the past few months. Here is the breakdown...As you can see from my name, I WAS having a nervous breakdown and now, I am nervous breakdown free.
I went on vacation in mid August to Colorado and came back with distinct bites on my ankles and on the back of my knee cap. They were in a line, all in a row. As the week went on, I got 6 more bites and noticed the red comet like blood stains on our white linens. When I went online, it immediately pointed to BED BUGS. I had really never heard of bed bugs in California but this website scared the bejesus out of me and I was immediately convinced this is what I had. I called a PCO in the Los Angeles area who came out the next day. He took a look around my house and told me that although he didn't see anything, he could "tell by the bites on my legs that we had bed bugs" and that because we were on vacation the week before, we must have brought them home with us. He immediately charged us hundreds of dollars, told me to wrap up all of me bedding and my other linens, and he proceeded to douse my home with delta dust and another mixture of dust. ( I know. I know.)
He said that my BB problem was so small that that should take care of it. He told me to bag all of my clothing, linens etc, wash and dry, and not come back into the house for the rest of the day. So that is what we did.
The next day, we came back in, and we hired a cleaning crew to clean up all of the dust. It was EVERYWHERE. He told me to leave a one inch perimeter around the edges, which we did. A few days later, more "bites." This time, on my stomach. We waited a week, called him back, and he came back in a week later and sprayed with pymtherin instead. Again, we bagged, washed, dried. This time, we kept everything bagged. We sprayed the entire house, all furniture, everything. We came back in, and again, days later, more "bites." I couldn't believe it. I was literally having a breakdown. I would come on this forum and beg for help. I would cry daily. I never ONCE saw an actual bed bug. I started to think that maybe we had mites? I would get "bitten" in the middle of the day, sitting on the couch in the living room. If we had had such a small infestation, how did it become so large where now they were eveywhere?
So, I basically moved out of my home with my animals and moved in to my parents house. I called 3 different PCO companies who call came out, including an entomologist. They laid sticky traps, searched the entire house including the mattresses and couches etc. They found nothing. I hired a caulker who caulked all the floors (no carpet in the house) so there were no openings. I bought climb up monitors and they were always empty. I literally had no life for 2 months living out of one plastic bag and wearing the same 3 outfits. It was a nightmare.
So my original PCO came back a final 3rd time and told me they were going to spray one more time. Even though I was hesitant, they told me this time, they would get rid of them. They came back 5 weeks after I initially called them and sprayed. 3 days later, I came in the house for an afternoon and that evening in the shower, I had 8 huge "bites" all over my torso that were as large as quarters. HUGE WELTS. I literally started crying. I went to the doctor and they injected them with cortisol. Ouch.
In the midst of my tears, I started getting suspicious. How in the WORLD were BB getting me at the daytime on my stomach like that without me noticing? I wasn't even spending the night there. I would go in and sit at the kitchen table and work on the computer for 3 hours and sometimes I would wear pants and a sweatshirt. It was weird. I started to think that it was possible that maybe I had bird mites or some invisible problem but what would be the possibility that I had both? Or did I not EVER have bed bugs?
So, I hired a full painting crew and cleaning crew. I paid $4000 and had the entire interior of my 1800 sq foot home painted, ceiling to floor. Everything. Then, I had a cleaning crew come in deep clean my home including all of my furniture, etc. We threw out our rugs, the one couch the PCO had doused and two chairs.
We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. We took the 50 contractor bags that had been cleaned and dried back to the laundrymat and we cleaned and dried them again. I hired an air conditioning duct cleaner to come in and ran the fire places all day.
We moved back in. 10 weeks after the initial bites occured.
I have now been back in for 4 weeks. NOT ONE SINGLE BITE OR MARK. Sleeping through the night on our white sheets, no stains, no weird itching. Nothing.
Yesterday, we opened our guest bedroom closet which is the one place we never go in and the last place that wasn't deep cleaned of 4 or five boxes. We emptied it and deep cleaned it and found remnants of delta dust on the boxes in there. I took a shower after and what do I see on my stomach that night for the first time in weeks? A big red welt on my stomach just like the others. Normally I would freak out and think this was a bug but it is not. It is the chemicals.
So... here is my theory. I could be wrong, but...The chemicals that they spray were leaving marks and "bites" that were making me think that I was still getting "bitten" even though I really wasn't. The only bites I ever got that were in a row and itched were back in August and then never again. So for all of Sept and Oct, I was going through a nervous breakdown and it was my own doing.
My husband is convinced he had a small problem that was probably taken care of by the 1st round of chemcials.
Had a read a post like this when I was going through what I was going though, I would have felt way better. So I wanted to share with you.
Also, this PCO is in Los Angeles and should not be handling BB. He didn't even know it was BB for sure and still treated for it which someone told me is not even legal. The other 3 PCO's who came told us that his application of the Delta Dust in our home was illegal and the places and the amount that he applied was illegal and not consistent with the labeling. One PCO refused to enter our home because of how toxic it was.
There was Delta Dust literally everywhere in our house.I hope this helps someone out there!!!!
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bedbuggery
junior member
Joined: Dec '08
Posts: 61offline
Posted 3 years ago
Sat Nov 21 2009 1:55:20
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Yes, the I think I had a mild case of silicoses from applying too much dust.
Let me afford you another theory based on my experience... I happened to have a nervous breakdown as well, I had a doctor put me on tranqs on christmas eve because I was freaking out. It's sort of complicated to explain but it goes something like this; I was having strong anaphylactic attacks. I also was having panic attacks. These two things fed each other, because an allergic attack manifests a lot of the same feelings as a panic attack. And likewise acute stress can worsen allergic reactions.
Ergo- I had a nervous breakdown. What I eventually learned was that I could drastically reduce my allergic response psychosomatically. What i learned from THAT was how to nurse my immune system back to health holistically. The reason I bring all this would be that BB's can cause skin conditions like hives, which look and behave just like temporary BB bites. It has been my experience that encountering things which bring back the BB horror (pre-infested items, or the encased bed I slept on for months) would elicit a psychosomatic response that could result in HIves, rashes, or nausea. Yes, pesticides can be extremely unhealthy, you can read their MSDS to find out to what degree. My thoughts are that because your "bites" manifested in the shower this would be something called "shower urticaria (hives)" which is prob. from the heat of the water meeting your newly sensitive skin, combined with a psychosomatic response from your encounter w/ the old things in your closet which brought back the experience.
It's like the Bedbugs are haunting you.... creepy eh?Like you I came back to this forum after months because of this lingering voice that said "WTF happened?"
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