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Potential Success Story- Advice needed please!
(4 posts)-
Hi everyone,
I think I may have finally gotten rid of these terrible bugs. I have a couple of questions regarding how long to wait until unpacking things and everything, but first I'll give you a background story of my case:
In the end of June, I started getting bites on my arms. I thought it was a food allergy or something, but then when I went to the doctor he confirmed they were bug bites. I pulled back my sheet and found 1 bug on the mattress sitting there. I killed it and kept it in a plastic bag. When I contacted my landlord, she called the exterinator and showed them the dead sample I had kept, and they confirmed it was bed bugs. THey came to look at my place but saw no signs of bed bugs (no blood on the sheets, no sheddings, no feces, etc.). They treated anyway based on the sample I gave them.
Before they treated, we removed all of our clothes and laundered them on Hot. Since then, I have kept all my clothes in my car (the trunk and backseats) and a few things that I wear more often in plastic garbage bags that I keep in my bathroom (I luckily have a decent sized bathroom to keep these in there). We moved all our furniture about 3 ft from the wall and vacuumed the place (making sure to remove the vacuum bag right after). They came and did a big treatment, treating in the walls and everything, and I made sure to buy pillow and mattress bed bug proof encasements. However, a few days later I noticed I still had some bites. I found one in my room on the mattress under a magazine one morning. They came and treated again(a less thorough treatment than the first, but still a treatment), then came again 2 more times over the next month when I continued to show bites.
My landlord checked with all the other apartments around us, and no one else showed signs of having the bed bugs. The landlord was mad at us for still havign us, as she said the exterminator said 3 treatments has always worked in the past. Finally, we decided to get rid of our couch in the living room b/c we found a couple in there when we fully examined it. I also bought a Pack-Tite and packtited all my shoes and teddy bears and jackets.
The exterminators came back and put some machine in my bedroom, and I slept in the living room for 2 weeks while it was in there. it's apparently a new state of the art machine, and it gives of CO2 and body heat to simulate a person. Any bed bugs in the room that are looking to feed would crawl in and be trapped. I was skeptical about this b/c I had never heard of anything like this. THey came back 2 weeks later and examined the machine, and there were 0 bugs or traces of bugs in it, so they said our apartment is cleared. I wasn't bit at all in the living room when I slept on an air mattress out there, which was also a very good sign.
I have been sleepign in my bed in my room again, and I have not been bitten. It has been about 8 days. Me and my roommate are frustrated with the situation, as we have been living out of cars/plastic bags since early July, as I'm sure a lot of you are also dealing with. We are so excited that this may be a success story and they may all finally be dead. Also, my original fear was that I may have brought them to a friends place or my boyfriends place b/c originally I was not super careful about my purses/shoes, but no one else has seemed to have any bites in those places or seen any bugs, so I'm hoping that we just didn't have a super bad case and I didn't bring any with me anywhere.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how long until I can unpack everything and bring stuff back in from my car? I want to do it in the next few days, I work in a corporate setting and it will be so nice to have my suits hung back up again in my closet. DO you think this is a good idea, since the extermintaor said we were in the clear? I'm just afraid an egg or baby bed bug suvived somewhere and will come out and cause the whole problem again. Not really sure what the time frame is for bringing stuff back into the drawers in my bedroom.
Also, as I still have fear over the possibility I may have infested someone else's house/apartment, how long of a time until I can feel more at ease about that and realize I didn't bring any in to their homes, is it possible it could be a couple of months until they notice they have them? I really just don't want anyone else to go through what I did, especially not because of me!
Any advice would be great. I'm really excited the bites have stopped, but want to make sure I do everything right to keep it that way!
Thanks,
Emma -
How have you "sterilized" the stuff in the bags? It's my guess that some folks reinfest their own homes by unpacking bagged items with eggs or bugs in them.
Portland, OR
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Eight days is not quite enough to be sure you got all the bed bugs and eggs.
Ento Richard Cooper suggests people wait 55 days after the last treatment (with no sign of bed bugs or bites during that time). That's if you react, and you do. Some people might give in a bit sooner. But not yet.
When you say the clothing is kept in your car, do you mean washed, dried on hot clothing in sealed bags?
I would not panic that your car is infested, but don't rule it out entirely. IF you start getting bites again, it could mean you have some bed bugs and/or eggs in the apartment, OR it could mean you are reinfesting yourself (from car, workplace, school, friend's home, etc.) or that neighbors have them and are sending them over.
Again, I don't want to alarm you. Eight days is a great sign, but be vigilant. I took the "success" tag down, but hope we're putting it on this thread soon. Bookmark and come back and let us know how it goes! Good luck!
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amyleeizmee
newbite
Joined: Oct '09
Posts: 2
Posted 1 month ago
Wed Oct 21 2009 21:59:34
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What we tell our customers is when washing your clothes, dry, wash, and dry. That way the heat will kill anything before it goes into the washer. Have you read any material on life cycles of bed bugs? Cuz' its crazy.
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