Alright, I've been reading this forum for a while now and I've finally decided I need some outside advice as I'm at a loss as to what to do next, so here we go:
In early September my husband brought home bed bugs from a business trip. About a month and a half later, we found bugs (we'd been getting bit the whole time, but thought it was mosquitoes since we'd been sleeping with the windows open). We immediately called our landlord who set up for a PCO to come do the first of three treatments a couple days later. We followed all of their directions to the letter, and he didn't seem too worried about eradicating our problem. He finished the last treatment right before Thanksgiving and everything seemed fine.
Let me preface this next part by saying that the last 5 months have been horrible for a multitude of reasons, and I was extremely stressed BEFORE the bed bug problem. Also, my husband and I both reacted to the bites (though I got bit more) and they looked and itched like mosquito bites, hence the initial confusion.
Two weeks after the last treatment I found a weird bump on my arm. It didn't itch, it was just kind of red and I quickly forgot about it. A week later I found another bump that was the same size, but not red, just kind of flesh-colored. I immediately tore our bed apart and found nothing, but I still laundered the linens and pillows on hot, just in case. It was at that point that I bought mattress and box spring encasements.
After we put the encasements on I felt a lot better and forgot about it - didn't get any new bumps, but I still checked myself every couple of days to be sure. A couple weeks passed, Christmas came and went, everything seemed fine. This is where I got confused. A couple of days after Christmas, I noticed a couple of new bumps on my leg. They weren't itchy, and they disappeared by the end of the day. Ever since then I've been getting small bumps that are smaller than my bites from when we had a confirmed case of bugs, but they just keeping cropping up on different parts of my body and I feel like I'm going mad! I've since bought one of the bb alert passive monitors and it's been on the outside of the box spring encasement at the head of the bed (I figured if there were some survivors that were getting out, they'd colonize it?) But it's turned up nothing since I installed it a week ago. I've checked our bed, bed frame, bedside tables, you name it, and I have yet to find a single physical sign that they're back. I'm going to buy 3 more monitors for our couch and cars just to be sure, but I'm at a total loss as to what I should do. Are the bumps just a physical manifestation of my paranoia? Should I be worried? My husband hasn't been getting any weird bumps on him and refuses to worry until I find some hard evidence, but I just have this horrible feeling that I'm missing something. I've considered calling a bug sniffing dog but there are only a couple in our area and I'm not sure how reliable that will be....
Anyway, if anyone has any advice, I'd greatly appreciate it. Sorry this was so long, I just needed to get it out!