9/10/2022 ~ There was an odd bug in my home a few months back, not any kind I’d seen before. I usually don’t kill bugs, I prefer to take them outside. But this one, somehow, looked menacing and I squashed it with my flipflop. Surprise! Surprise! It bled red.
Turns out, I’m not the only one who hasn’t seen that kind of bug before. According to PestWorld, 84% of pest control professionals who are called in about bugs people have seen in their homes and believe to be fleas or cockroaches, find the bugs are really… Bed Bugs.
Cindy Mannes, vice president of public affairs for the National Pest Management Association, said, “We’re finding that while bed bugs remain a pervasive issue and the public is concerned, general awareness and knowledge about these pests is alarmingly low.”
Adding to the confusion, despite the fact a survey by the National Pest Management Association showed that 91% of bed bug reports come from single family homes, 89% from condos and apartments, and only 68% from hotels/motels, most bed bug articles I read blamed travel and lodgings away from home.
That left me scratching my head, and not just because of the bugs that were in my pillow or the fact their percentages add up to well over a hundred. You see, I’m housebound. I have balance issues from living in hydrogen sulfide years ago… long story. The point is, I don’t go out. So, obviously I didn’t bring the bed bugs in, because I don’t go out in the first place.
If I didn’t bring them in, where did they come from?
Upstairs, and I wasn’t warned by property management that the tenants above me had bed bugs. Further, property management said that if I put diatomaceous earth along the bottom of walls inside my apartment, it was a violation of my lease and I could be evicted. Yikes.
Black dot on 2 inch cotton round! A bed bug for sure, that’s what I thought. But no, it’s not. It’s a mite that came in under the wall between my apartment and the one next door. It’s a scabies mite… and getting rid of them once they burrow under your skin and lay eggs, is horrendously difficult.
Because it took me so long to recognize the tiny bugs weren’t bed bugs, they were able to burrow a huge complex of tunnels under my skin, all filled with eggs.
And that’s the problem! Their eggs are impervious to Ivermectin. They can live four years under your skin, despite repeated use of Ivermectin.
I think it’s this layer of eggs that leads to Scabies causing autoimmune diseases like rhumatoid arthritis. I think the eggs are so prevalent when scabies has gone untreated for as long as mine did, while I was ignorant of what was going on, that the body’s immune system becomes convinced the eggs are a part of the body and… begins attacking “the body”…
The scientific view is different: “An Association between Rheumatoid Arthritis and Scabies Infection,” written following a population-based study in Taiwan, and published in Journal of Medical Sciences 37(2):p 50-55, Mar–Apr 2017, and says, generally speaking,
“Scabies is a pruritic disease caused by a parasitic skin infection. Scabies is easily spread by contact with the mite Sarcoptes scabiei. About 300 million people worldwide are infected with scabies each year. Those with a lower quality of life have a greater chance of having intensely itchy skin lesions caused by scabies infection. In developing countries, the prevalence rate is high among preschool children, adolescents, and the elderly. However, scabies infection is also more common among nursing home residents, institutionalized patients, and immunocompromised persons. The pathophysiology of scabies infection is generated by hypersensitivity-like reactions, followed by immune responses.”
Vitamin B12 lozenges help you have healthy nerves and blood.
Specifically, it says, “This is the first study to investigate the relationship between RA and scabies. There were 5135 subjects with scabies and 19,115 controls studied for 7 years, with a 7-year follow-up. We found that patients with scabies infections had a 46% increased risk of developing RA.”
“One of the possible reasons for this increased risk is chronic inflammation. Scabies is an infectious, inflammatory disease, and increasing evidence implicates inflammation as a critical mediator of RA. RA is a chronic immune disorder.”
My approach in trying to find a solution for myself, is to allow eggs to hatch by not using Ivermectin for long periods. When the crop of new mites becomes more than I can bear, I use Ivermectin again, for relief.
This has been going on for three years. The mites are much smaller now, indicating… maybe… that some eggs hatch and new mites lay eggs resulting in much smaller mites than before.
When I believed the mites were tiny bed bugs, I thought the reason their bites hurt was that they hadn’t learned how to use the analgesic bed bugs have, to keep people from waking up when they bite. Even when I still had bed bugs, I felt the tiny ones (mites) were the worst: “One of the things that’s so bad about the bed bugs, is the little ones. They are tiny. Look at the size of a period at the end of a sentence, they are half that big, if that. And, perhaps because they are so small, they bite more. My theory is that when they bite there’s immediate swelling, and that closes off the flow of blood, so they bite again. I think the adult bed bugs make large enough holes that the swelling doesn’t stop them from getting a good meal.” Clearly I saw a difference, but I didn’t understand it.
“I have bites in groups of half a dozen, and more. Other bites are more singular. I think it’s unlikely the bugs get together for a dining fiesta, it’s more likely the groups of smaller bites result from immediate swelling. Anyway, that’s my theory.,” I wrote.
“Just so you know, they go on itching for a really long time. The picture above is at least a week after the earlier picture, and the bites are still visible, and Very Itchy,” scabies bites typically scab like the two top bites in the picture.”
I reduced bed bug numbers by using diatomaceous earth. I wore a dust mask so I wouldn’t breath it, but I failed to protect my eyes and got a thing like a grain of rice, called a pterygium, on the white of my right eye from the dust. At first I thought the bugs had laid eggs in my eye. While I was glad it wasn’t that, it’s not fun to think the growth may not go away.
Another thing: a lot of people search google to see if bed bugs go into noses. The search results all say, “NO.” Or they say, “If they do, it’s so rare…”
But here’s the thing: I can feel them in my nose. I’ve swabbed the inside of my nose with alcohol, and pulled out little bodies. Also, when I “scrub” the inside of my nose with paper towel, I find them. See the picture below. Be aware, many are very very small.
It was really hard to get out. It was like it was clamped onto the inside of my nose.
When they’re crawling around in my nose they feel sort of like just before you sneeze, only creepy!
Gross, Gross, Gross!!!
Another thing is, just when you think you’ve killed them all, a new batch is likely to hatch. While bed bugs lay only one to five eggs a day, if the lady bed bug evades your efforts to kill her for 5 days, that could be another 25 bed bugs. After I saw the first couple of odd bugs, learned they were bed bugs, and started putting effort into killing them, I thought that totally they’d added up to 25, maybe a few more. I was foolishly ignorant, and oblivious of the likelihood of eggs and that the total I imagined was probably a hundred shy, if I knew about all the tiny, tiny ones.
Scabies mites are horrifically worse: they can lay eggs two days after hatching.
“It’s been really expensive for me… not just buying stuff to kill the bed bugs, but all the stuff I had to replace, and all the extra Tide I had to buy to keep up with the constant washing.” Little did I know that I’d be fighting the mites for years…
And, then there’s the sleeplessness!
“11/27/22 ~ I’m very worried. Last Monday Property Management had pest control come to my apartment to treat for bed bugs. On November 7, 2022, Bug Stomp pest control had put down 4 traps: two in my bedroom, two in my bathroom where I’ve seen bed bugs. I haven’t seen a bed bug in my bedroom for quite a long time, a month, maybe more. I had seen the white nymphs and tiny black bed bugs coming up the side of my mattress. I used a lint roller to take them off and keep them from going anywhere.”
“I had to go outside while Bug Stomp was treating. When I came in, I saw that my bed looked odd. I thought the mattress cover had gotten sprayed unevenly. I had to wait for the pesticide to dry… and when it had a couple hours I went into my room and saw that my foam mattress had been soaked in pesticide, with small puddles of pesticide on the floor where it had dripped off.”
“I put a sheet on the mattress. I hadn’t been using a mattress pad because it was easier to see the little bugs on a smooth, sheet.”
“The smell in my apartment was not quite to the point of being overpowering. I didn’t have any place to sleep but on my foam mattress that had been saturated.”
“I didn’t sleep well. Next morning I felt head achy and sort of sick. The next day was the same, maybe a bit worse. The third day I was also dizzy. I’d been dizzy during the night.”
“Today’s Sunday, so tomorrow will be a week. My mouth tastes metallic, a smelled a funny smell, and my hip felt uncomfortable yesterday, but I didn’t think much of it. I cleaned the area with alcohol on a cotton round, and was surprised at the brownish color of the cotton round after I’d wiped the area. I’d never seen that before. Today when I looked, there’s a huge angry red area where my hip was on the mattress every night. I sleep on my side, and don’t move during the night, mainly because I have mobility issues. I wiped the red area with alcohol, to clean it. The cotton round came away with an orangish brown color and a bad smell. Despite the fact it hurt to put alcohol on the area, I cleaned it. If I were thinner I might have seen the problem without having to contort a bit, the way I did today, to get a view of the area. Then, I took pictures.”
“What’s upsetting is that I’m housebound, so I didn’t bring the bed bugs in. Other tenants have had them, and property management has a policy not to warn other tenants. I was a bit shocked when the property manager told me that. Had I known I could have put diatomaceous earth at the base of my walls, and never had the huge problem I’ve had, plus, property management charged the man upstairs $500 (at least that’s what he said) when they treated his apartment. I don’t have that kind of money. He gets quite a lot of help from Life Link, and has much lower rent than me. I’m on my own a lot more than he is.”
“I ordered a new mattress, but it wasn’t delivered today as it was supposed to be. I’ve been keeping a window open during the day, despite the cold outside and the high cost of electricity. But I forgot today. When I’m not feeling well it’s hard to remember simple things and take care of simple things.”
“I was shocked that not only did Bug Stomp drench my foam mattress in pesticide, and leave my floors filthy, apparently he wears farm yard type shoes/boots when he goes into people’s homes, but he didn’t appear to treat the bathroom where he found the single bed bug after 8 days of the traps being in place, half as much as he did my bed. And, I’m still getting the white nymphs and the little tiny black bed bugs coming up my bed. Though, since I began putting a dusting of diatomaceous earth around my bed, there have been a lot fewer of them. I don’t know where they’re coming from, but it seems they must have a nest in a wall cavity. The only full sized bugs I’ve seen for quite a long time were in the bathroom. I took pictures of one on the wall. When they’re on the floor I kill them and put them in the toilet. I’m afraid to lose track of them and let them lay eggs or something. So I don’t try to get my camera to take a picture. I just happened to have it with me when I took the pictures of the one on the wall.”
After the pest control, I still had the little bed bugs, which of course were really mites.