Hey everyone -- I've been stalking bedbugger since before I had bed bugs because I was constantly paranoid that I would get them (having known some people that had them) and one day my worst nightmare came true!
I live in a two bedroom apartment and it's very small. My roommate found a live bed bug about a month and a half ago and then checked his bed and found fecal matter on his box spring in the corner - we assumed that was the nest. I had no signs of bed bugs on my bed, or in my room but we still cleaned the whole apartment top to bottom and started our treatment. Luckily our building is taking care of treatments, though I am a little dubious of how effective they have been. We think that the bed bugs came from other apartments in the buildings because we've seen the treatment flyers in their doors before, but they haven't been treating apartments above, below and adjacent.
We had a treatment once a week (spraying DE I think) for three weeks. Right after our final treatment my roommate found a bed bug (he thinks) on his bed and killed and flushed it. Since we weren't 100% sure if it was a bed bug or not we asked them for one more treatment even though a PCO apparently said that there were no signs of bed bugs in our apartments and the PCO apparently "opened up our bed encasements and didn't see any dead bugs in there" (which I thought sounded really weird and kind of stupid!?) They treated one more time and we thought that we would be in the clear. I foolishly started to not be as vigilant about bagging clothes and shoes. I had the climbups on my bed but I still haven't seen anything in those...
About 4 days ago I came home around 9:00pm and found a bed bug on my bed :'(. I think it was a 4th or 5th stage nymph and it looked unfed. I was so upset immediately bagged it and pulled the sheets off my bed and inspected the encasements but I didn't find any signs of fecal matter. I checked the climb ups and there was nothing in them at all. That night I got a bite on my ankle that swelled up to the size of a golfball so I'm thinking it was a bug bite of some kind and most likely a bed bug.
We're set to have another three treatments a week apart from each other. I'm just so frustrated by it all and I feel so dumb for thinking we were in the clear. Where could the nest be? Why aren't the climb ups detecting anything? How could they be on my mattress if there is no fecal matter?
Thanks for listening guys!