Good night....sleep tight....don't let the bed bugs bite

One evening, this past may, my husband and I had gone biking on the trails. It was a warm day and I was wearing shorts and a sleeveless top. We returned home around sunset. I had a crab salad for dinner. The next morning I woke up with rash on my left arm. I was not sure if it was due to poison ivy or the crab salad. Anyway I tried home remedies but to no avail. The rash started spreading to my right arm, left leg, neck and even had to my face.

I panicked and went to the doctor, who was clueless as to what it was. He prescribed some ointment which despite prescription benefits cost me around 10 dollars. I used the tube within a week and I went to get a refill, I was told that I was back too soon and that I had to wait for another two weeks. When I asked him what the cost was sans prescription the pharmacist said it is 250 dollars. Whoa.....WTF....hearing that caused me to break into cold sweat. There was no generic alternative available as this medicine was imported from Germany (I think). Frustrated I went home and tried an Ayurvedic ointment, "Kailas Jeevan," which gave me some relief. More power to Kailas Jeevan! I also found out that whenever I wore long sleeves, the rash would subside. Therefore in summer I wore a long sleeve tunic, pajamas, and went to bed every night hoping for the best (pun unintended).

Anyway a few days later, my husband broke into a rash as well. Love is….breaking into rash together! One night he woke up scratching and switched on the bedside lamp to find an insect crawling on the bed. He caught hold of it and squashed it. We both did not know what it was but suspected that it might be a bed bug. Of course we had no clue as to how a bed bug looks; therefore did a google search and VOILA…. bed bug it was! We called the pest control guys immediately the next morning.

After that, were the nightmarish four months of my life! We could not sleep on our bed anymore. Therefore, we started sleeping in the living room. Bad idea! Those bugs spread from the bedroom to the living room!! They were in our closet…. they were everywhere…they were the bane of our lives. We threw our wooden bed frame and replaced it with a metal one. We got rid of a lot of stuff from our home. We packed our clothes in black trash bags and left them out in the sun, on our patio. We cleared off our closet, vacuumed our suitcases, and put everything out in the sun! Our place was a BIG MESS. Both of us are so particular about things being in its place and overall neatness that it was horrible living like this. We felt like refugees living in shelters. We had become so paranoid that we saw bugs everywhere!!!

We had the first treatment in early-May. The pest control guys did not give us proper directions as to what we had to do post treatment. We had locked the bedroom and had confined ourselves to the living room, kitchen and of course the bathroom! It was such a nightmare! Two weeks later we saw some bugs crawling in the living room. We called the pest control guys to inform them about this. They told us that this was natural and that the first month the treatment would be bi-weekly and then it was monthly, depending on the extent of infestation. We had our last treatment in mid-July and an inspection in August.

It took us almost two months to put everything back in order since then. We had to get rid of a lot of stuff. The funny thing is that according to the pest control people, we did not have a major infestation or something that is considered a serious infestation! I shudder to think what it might have been, had it been a major infestation. Another mystery is where the hell did those bed bugs come from in the first place! Apparently bed bugs have resurged in the United States in the recent years.

As I write this blog we have been bug-free for more than two months! My husband still keeps a flashlight on the nightstand. This morning around 5AM, I woke up to find my husband with his flashlight investigating the picture frames above the headboard and the mattress for bugs. I could not stop laughing because I realized that the bed bugs have totally encompassed our lives since the past five months. So even if my skin itches due to dryness…we get paranoid suspecting there might be bugs!