Location Background: My husband and I live in a large, pre-war coop complex in Queens. The complex is 750 apartments, but there are separate but connected buildings. In our building are 35 apartments. In total, there are two laundry facilities with may 20 or so washers and 20 dryers in each. We own our own apartment.
My story:
We discovered we had bed bugs in May, after I woke up scratching my arm during the night. We know that someone had bugs previously in an apartment adjacent to us, as our apartment was inspected previously. We notified our management company, and we had an inspection a few days later. The PCOs when they had previously inspected had laid down glue traps, which helped us in May when a bug was found by the PCO under an upholstered chair in our living room. We reacted quickly, and in 3 days bagged up all of our stuff (after drying/wiping/etc.), except in kitchen and bathroom. We had two treatments by the PCOs paid for by our building. They did chemical transport for the furniture and baseboard and wall, PI spray. We didn't have any sign of them afterwards, and nothing in our passives.
We decided with all of the inconvenience, and since everything was out of our closets anyway, to remodel our apartment as we had been meaning to do this for a while. We had our floors resanded and finished (fixing cracks and hiding spaces) and walls repainted (and holes filled in). We also remodeled our kitchen. So we continued to live in our place while this was happening, obviously further inconvenienced.
Then we found out I required hip surgery to repair a labral tear I had received while moving furniture with the bed bugs! So I had to have surgery a month ago, and I'm still recovering from that.
We finally had unpacked our stuff and were just settling back in to living as "normal" people, and then I got another bite earlier this week and we just had two bugs positive ID'd in our glue traps. HEAVY HEART.
My husband and I have been having a rough time right now anyway, as the stress of the first round of bugs, remodeling, and recovering from surgery, all were taking its toll. For this to happen now is ridiculously comical and cruel. We are laughing and then sobbing (well I am) about this all from minute to minute.
We cannot bag up all of our stuff again...I physically cannot do this at this point, and we both feel so mentally exhausted and overloaded. We are having a canine inspection team coming this afternoon to determine how serious this infestation is. We believe it to be minor, as the bugs found were young (one a nymph, and the other nearly fully grown adult). Certainly we know there are more in the bedroom, but we are very observant and paranoid and haven't noticed anything more.
We are hesitant to go with our co-op paid for PC company. We are interested in going with M&M Environmental here in NYC, as I've read a lot of positive things about them. I so far feel really good talking with them, and they've been helpful up until this point. Of course we don't want to pay additionally for all of this either. So we're on the fence.
The PCOs we used previously required everything to be bagged in the entire apartment--sealed--for 6 weeks. I've been reading increasingly about other PCOs who don't advocate doing this. What are your thoughts on this?
We certainly can't afford the thermo treatment. One option we had discussed with M&M is doing spot-treatment (assuming the infestation is not serious) so that we would just have to deal with the stuff in the bedroom. My fear is that this will just force the bugs to flee to the other rooms. Does that happen? I realize this isn't a bug bomb or anything. What is the best way to spot treat it?
My other fear is that despite doing all of this, we could very well get this from a neighbor in the elevator or laundry room, so despite doing all of this, we may be back to square one again.
Short of moving or burning the place down (which have been two thoughts I've considered 
), what can be done? What would you recommend doing?