So after several months in an ongoing battle to beat the bed bug problem we are having, I’ve decided to document everything that is happening in the hope that I can bounce some ideas off of other sufferers, and hopefully share any successes or mistakes with them as well. This first post is going to be pretty hefty as I will be detailing all that has happened from the beginning, so I hope it will be somewhat readable.
A few months back my partner noticed strange bites on his body. Initially we passed them off as mosquito bites as the summer months were soon approaching and assumed the temperature change had brought along its usual share of nasty insects. On and off the bites appeared, sometimes weeks would pass before new ones would suddenly spring up. As the bites became more consistent and frequent, paranoia set in and we started to suspect it was more than a simple mosquito problem. Initially I looked to my cats, wondering if they had somehow mysteriously brought in some fleas. However, after considering that not a single one of them were itching, and they are all indoor cats, I decided that fleas were not the culprits.
Eventually we realised that it was something to do with our bedroom. The itchiness and swelling we learned, does not always appear straight after being bitten, but certainly at the beginning of the assault our bodies reacted quick enough for us to notice that it had something to do with our bed. My partner would wake up in the morning with itchy bumps; red, swollen and intensely itchy, and the swelling was sometimes so bad that the entire area throbbed. I questioned why it was only he who was being bitten at first (don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t exactly jealous!), wondering whether it had something to do with blood or temperature preference. As with all things that bothered me, I began spending countless hours combing through the internet, scrutinising every article and thread I could find on these elusive, blood-sucking monsters. What the hell was biting us? The thought of some creepy crawly climbing all over my body and drinking my blood was enough to make my hairs stand on end, and I wanted them out of my house.
From my research I was able to deduce that more than likely, this was a bed bug issue. The tell-tale cluster of bites, the intense itchiness and swelling and the night-attacks were all indicative of bed bugs. I attempted to check the bed sheets and mattress over for the classic signs of an infestation, however I was unable to find any. So far we had not seen a single insect that could have been responsible for the biting. Frustratingly, internet or not, it was all still just assumption. That same night after checking the bed over, I ended up sleeping in a skimpy vest as the temperatures had sharply risen in the last few days. At this point my partner was still the sole person being bitten, and so I took no particular precautions as the circumstances were still so uncertain for us. This turned out to be a major mistake and I woke up after a fitful night of scratching and half-sleep, to FOURTEEN swollen, itchy bumps on my body. My back, shoulder, arms and thighs were covered with awful lumps. My body reacted so badly to the allergens in the bug’s saliva that my whole body throbbed and itched like mad.
The itching seemed to last for days, and the swelling for weeks – the bumps lasted for at least two entire weeks. After that attack I became severely anxious – my personal space felt invaded and even the thought of bugs made my scalp crawl. Even after the bumps went down I constantly felt itchy in my room – I would experience a constant tingling sensation on my arms and legs, even outside of the bed, it felt like things were crawling on me. That week we stripped the bed, vacuumed the whole room and eventually bought a mattress cover that zips up the entire mattress. I read that the purpose of it was to keep new bed bugs out of the mattress (as this is usually their favourite dwelling) and also to keep any existing inhabitants from getting out. We zipped up both our pillows also, and heat treated our sheets and duvets. We came to the decision that it was best we kept the mattress bare, other than the zip cover – and that meant packing away our duvet as well. All of the clutter under the bed was cleaned, bagged and put away into storage – and it was whilst cleaning under the bed that I thought I saw an insect resembling a bed bug dart away somewhere, but I only saw it the once and never managed to catch it. After hours of non-stop cleaning we were left with the bare essentials – mattress, bed frame, pillows. Sleeping on the bare bed that night was unusual and uncomfortable. On the one hand we were so exhausted we just fell straight into a deep slumber, but on the other hand we were waking up frequently, feeling cold and exposed from missing our duvet.
The weather during those months were not kind – some days would be surprisingly warm, making sleep with no covers reasonably bearable – but some days the nights grew unusually cold and despite wearing extra layers to compensate, we’d constantly wake up from the dropping temperatures. The bites seemed to have lessened and decreased in frequency initially after that manic clean, and every night we would spray RAID around the skirting and bed in a bid to stop being bitten – in hindsight this was probably not a good idea, as I later found out that aerosol repellents are seldom effective on bed bugs, and end up driving them to other hiding places in the room. We also invested in a sleeping bag to put on the bed in replacement of the large duvet. This, we reasoned would be packed away every morning so that the bugs would have less material to hide in and breed, and easily washed as opposed to a large king-size duvet. It would also be easier to observe the bed and our surroundings whilst we sleep, rather than be swamped under a huge cover which could serve as a good hiding place for the bugs.
We have used this sleeping bag for a few months now, and we definitely have mixed feelings about it. While it keeps us warm on the colder nights, the hot nights can be a complete nightmare. Since using it I’ve noticed that I have never been bitten once anywhere lower than my shoulders – this leads me to deduce that the bugs either don’t like the idea of going into the sleeping bag, or they are lazy and satisfied with having access only to our upper halves. Because of this I have become obsessive about keeping the bag zipped right up at night, making sure not to expose any of my torso or legs – this, you can imagine can be a problem on warm nights. The last two weeks just gone, temperatures at night have been close to 30 degrees Celsius – and with our huge furnace of a PC and large TV on, sometimes the temperatures can reach unbearable highs in our bedroom. Sleeping like this, in a zipped up bag designed to keep warmth IN – is a hell unto itself.
Eventually after more research I stopped spraying the RAID. I didn’t like the idea that I might be unwittingly spreading them around the room to even harder to reach places, and sleeping in a room full of insecticide every night appealed to me even less. But this decision left us totally defenceless against them, with nothing to deter them from freely biting us – and so the bites slowly began to reappear.
It’s hard to describe the sinking feeling you get, when you realise that all your efforts were in vain. An awful feeling of helplessness – knowing that we cannot afford Pest Control services, particularly when there is no certain guarantee of success – and not having any real, useable weapons against our enemy. I went through a period of severe insomnia, unable and unwilling to sleep, in the fear that I would be bitten again. Every night I would have nightmares about insects biting me, and every few hours I would suddenly awake, anxiously checking the mattress for signs of the little blighters.
After weeks of sleepless nights and an undying search for more effective itch-relief, I happened upon an old Chinese remedy for itching and insect bites in our medicine cabinet. The English on the bottle told me that it contained two key ingredients: Turpentine Oil and Camphor. I recalled reading in an article that these two things were traditionally used to kill bed bugs in the 18th century, and found it surprising that we had this stuff sitting in our cupboard all this time. Needless to say we began applying this to the edges of our bed before sleep, and all over ourselves as well. I doubt it did much favours for our skin, but at least the menthol in it helped to promote calming sleep. At first it seemed to work – we went a few weeks without any bites and wondered if perhaps it really does work to ward off the insects. I was not naive enough to believe that the bugs would actually die from contacting the oil, but I assumed that perhaps it was a good deterrent. Still, despite its initial success, after a few weeks of obsessive application the effect began to wear off. I don’t know whether this was due to them building up a resistance to the oil, or if it was because in the time that they were absent, they were busy making baby bed bugs. But bites began to reappear and my partner suffered more bites to his hands, neck and shoulders.
We were at a loss. The chance of winning this battle was becoming bleaker by the minute, with our options fast running out. Up to this point we still had not seen a single bed bug, not even so much as a shell, corpse or even droppings. From time to time I even questioned whether we were going insane, and suffering from some kind of psychological issue that was manifesting itself on our bodies. I went back to researching, and started looking for alternative products to tackle the problem. There are countless barrier methods that have been used by others, including putting the mattress in the centre of the room and creating a chemical barrier around the bed to ensure a good night’s sleep; this was never a viable option for us as we have cats, and the nature of how we share this house means our cats cannot avoid coming into our bedroom. We tried putting sticky tape around the entire edge of the mattress and along the head board, with disastrous results – the glue on the tape eventually dissolved into a gooey mess, which almost destroyed our leather head board and took a day to clean off. In all the time that the tape was on (around a month) – not a single bug was caught on it, but we still suffered bites.
In the end I gave in and bought some Silicone Dioxide, which is a kind of dust/powder formed naturally from crushed shells of crustaceans. The dust itself is like flour, and the food-grade kind that I purchased is harmless to animals and humans. From what I know, the powder is formed of microscopic particles like glass shards, which when crawled over by insects will cut into their waxy exteriors and eventually lead to death by dehydration. It sounded like as good a plan as any, so I got myself a dust blower and a quantity of this dust. I already knew of this method a few months before, but was uncertain about using it as I didn’t want to endanger my cats – they like to play under the bed and I didn’t want them rolling around and sniffing about in it. I later read that it is reasonably safe for pets and humans, if used in sensible quantities and so decided it was worth a try. After dusting around the edges of the bed, we continued as we had been doing and hoped for the best. Unfortunately the bed bugs seemed to rekindle their original romance with my partner and day after day with increased frequency he was getting bitten on his upper half. I couldn’t work out if it was because I slept with the sleeping bag right up to my neck, or if it was because they were living closer to his side of the bed, but the bites were gradually making him anxious and depressed. I started to suspect that perhaps they were living in the cracks and crevices in the wall near his side, and so we set about taping up the holes and gaps.
Previously, we had purchased a dry-steam steamer, which lets out jets of high pressure, dry steam. We put this to use today and cleaned the whole mattress with it to kill any eggs and then all around the bed frame and gaps in the walls. Lifting the mattress to get to the bed frame, I scoured the whole thing for signs of life – I was hoping that maybe I’d find a shell, maybe one that had died of old age – but there was nothing. Other than some cat hairs and dust bunnies, there wasn’t a single bed bug in sight. I lamented to my partner that this was impossible – that after all these months of being bitten surely we would have seen at least ONE, stupid little bug. Taking out my frustration on the bed, I started steaming; blindly spraying all the surfaces and gaps begrudgingly when all of a sudden there it was: the elusive bed bug that had been plaguing us all these months. I quickly picked it up (with gloved hands) and put it into a small container, which also contained the dust. I was elated – finally after all these months I found a living, moving bed bug. We weren’t crazy after all! Despite knowing that our captive was clearly not the ONLY bed bug responsible, it was a relief to finally get hold of one, and to know that the problem we were having really was to do with them and not some other mysterious creature. We continued to clean thoroughly with the steamer, and then after drying we taped up as many gaps and cracks in the walls as possible. We then dusted all the gaps and slats in the bed frame before putting the mattress back in place.
We are currently laundering all of our clothing, which sits in a wardrobe directly next to our bed. I know from experience that the bugs have probably been disturbed from their hiding place and it is possible that they could have migrated into the wardrobe. To avoid this possibility we are in the midst of heat treating all of our clothes, and packing them away in sealed bags in another room. Consequently this means having to live out of a basket, with very limited clothing options, but it’s a small price to pay if it can help to eliminate the problem.
It is now currently 4.00 am and my partner is still heating his clothes. His wardrobe will soon be emptied, leaving only mine left to do tomorrow. After this step is taken, I will have exhausted nearly every possible avenue and option. We have no active weapon against them – and they continue to breed and hide. We don’t know where they are living and we don’t really know how many they are in numbers. Today, we took one prisoner, and unknowingly killed another (stepped on in the midst of cleaning).
How many are there left?
Stay tuned to find out – we have yet to sleep.
I will be discussing bed bugs in detail in later posts, their habits, my observations and possible strategies. Keep your eyes peeled as I update on the condition of our single captive!
