I've come to the conclusion that there might not be anything more worse in the whole world than bed bugs (okay, so obviously there is....I mean we have ISIS and Ebola and Human Trafficking and Hunger and...well the list can go on and on, so clearly I am exhajerating). Anywhoo, somewhere about 2am on Monday morning I discovered that my bed might actually be covered with some kind of bug that liked nothing more than to take chunky bites out of my back. I tried to sleep through it, but until I was absolutely completely exhausted (which was somewhere around 5am) I couldn't. Instead I socoured google for any ounce of information I could get about what I could do to get rid of these bugs and formulated plans for what I would do as soon as it was morning enough to start making noise around the house.
We originally discovered the bed bug problem about a month ago when one of my housemates thought one of the blankets in her room might have them. She prayed and stopped using that blanket though, and the problem seemed to just go away. It wasn't until a few days later that I was informed that our one couch was infested as well (Did you read that...our ONE couch...meaning the only place you can sit in our communal space minus at the table!). That was right before we went away for a week long ministry outreach and I doused the couch with some "Kill'em all" spray my other teammate had. When we returned the problem seemed to be fixed once again.
Well... that was until a few days later when my other housemate discovered that the little buggers must have run from the fumes sprayed on the couch, right under the door and into her room! She ended up having to clean all her sheets and sprayed in her room as well. But that seemed to do the trick and the problem disappeared again. At this point I was feeling pretty lucky, I had basically escaped the "Bite-fest" of 2014....or so I thought!
Then Sunday night into Monday morning happened. Like I said above, I could not sleep for the life of me that night. I kept tossing and turning and scratching and I couldn't figure out what was going on (of course at the time I blamed it on a ill-advised decision to eat a giant chocolate bar just hours before bed). That's when I felt it...the first of many bites on my back. That one was followed by another and another and before I knew it, it was obvious, the bed bug were attacking!
Monday morning, as soon as the sun was up, I stripped my bed and threw it, along with every bit of clothing I thought might have somehow even touched my bed, into the laundry (wash and dryer...since it's apparently the heat that kills bed bugs but the water drowns them). Then I sprayed my bed, my pillows and my sleeping bag (which apparently is not washing machine safe) with our bottle of chemical death and waited the 10 minutes the bottle says you have to wait, before re-entering my room.
Apparently the bottle doesn't know what it's talking about because after 10 minutes my room still smelled like fumes. So I ran in, opened my one tiny window, turned on my fan and ran out, believing after an hour this should do the trick. An hour later my room still smelled like you needed a gas mask to be anywhere near it. At this point I made the not so wise decision to open my bedroom door believing that if I opened the window in the kitchen as well, it would create enough wind in the house to air out my room quickly. In reality all that did was make our entire house smell like fumes. So next I opened every window in the house and froze my butt off for hours believing that surely THIS would make my room safe to stand in again, while also airing out the rest of the house as well. That didn't help though...at least not in my bedroom.
Somewhere around 3:30pm I braved my room again and discovered that my sleeping bag was pretty potent with the fumes. So, at the suggestion of one of my roommates, I threw it in the tub and gave it a bath. Good thing too as doing so I watched brown murky water flow off of it the more water and soap I used. After that, I hung it up outside, over two chairs to dry and thankfully it actually smelled much better. Unfortunately, my room still smelled like chemicals, so I ended up having to take two thin mattresses from my housemates room (Mattresses that may or may not have had bed bugs themselves) and I slept on the them in the middle of the living room using two blankets from her room as well (blankets that again she was unsure of, in terms of whether or not they had bugs).
Surprisingly I slept really well last night (probably cause I had no sleep the night before) and woke up this morning with the bright idea to air out my mattress and pillows outside as well. So that's what I did for several hours today. And guess what?!?! That worked! With my mattress back in place and my blankets fitted back on it, my room is officially back to the healthy smelling zone...and hopefully all the bed bugs have either run away or died!
Here I was thinking I was the lucky one for going weeks without having to really deal with these stupid bugs and it turned out I was the one who had the hardest time trying to get rid of them! I've learned my lesson. Now, let's all pray that the bugs don't come back and that there's no sickness that occurs from any lingering fumes that I know not of in my room! If all goes well, then hopefully this will be the end of the beg bug saga of 2014 (let's keep those finger's crossed)!
No comments:
Post a Comment