Hi... Thanks so much for providing this resource. I have been reviewing the information here since Monday when we discovered that we are almost certainly infested.
So, the background (skip to arrow below if not interested)... this spring we had a run-in with head lice. The kids and I all turned up with them and were treated by a clinician. They were successfully removed for the kids but continued to keep coming back to me. So, I battled those all summer. Finally in the last few weeks, I thought they were finally conquered, but then again started waking up madly itching, and it seemed like they must be wandering off my hair while I slept because I was bitten all over my chest.
I spent a lot of time with a hair dryer and a good nit comb--the last days no lice were combed out but when I woke itching in the night, ran into the bathroom and madly combed my hair in the dark, from the very back of my hair some small knots came out that had small pepper looking specks... smashed BB? I had started paying attention more. We have recently obtained some new, white sheets and I'd started watching to catch lice lurking there, and found some. I would vindictively grab any dark specks I found on the bed with a pair of tweezers and dump them into a bowl with diluted peroxide solution. Some of them turned out to be lint, but others were definitely bugs.
Finally last Monday I was itching like mad and thought, I guess I have to give up on getting rid of the lice myself, so I called another clinician. She came out and did not find any lice at all (which feels a bit empowering-we did it after all).
However, when I showed her the bowl of specks I had collected, she identified two of the bugs drifting there as being bed bugs. (they were very small but visible, a translucent orange-ish tan, with segmented bodies).
So, I started thinking. On a few previous occasions I had noticed mysteriously appearing bugs suddenly on my arm that I now realize match the description of adult BBs. I had thought they were beetles of some kind. For the last couple years I had been seeing dermatologists about weird rashes and was told that it was "atopic dermatitis". Since nobody else in the family seemed to have any issues and I have had trouble with allergies, eczema, etc all my life, it didn't occur to me to question it. I thought perhaps it was food allergies....
Since the lice clinician's revelation (they had recently been discovered in the apartment complex where she lives so she had been reading up on them) I have found more signs of infestation. The black specks materialize on my bedding, I have been bitten (in what I realized from reading your site was in the classic 3 in a row patterns) around my neck and chest, and some bites on the arms. I think I smashed one in my sleep a few nights ago; I woke to a strange berry smell and found a pea sized spot of bloodlike stain on my pillow...
Anyway... now it seems clear that we have an infestation, and maybe have for quite a while. In early 2012 we replaced our waterbed mattress with a heavy memory foam one, in the waterbed frame, which is an elderly wooden captain's bed. We live in a single-family, 2 story house with inadequate closet space and 20 years of accumulated clutter. We can't afford to replace anything nor to hire a PCO at this time.
After the first night, when I had moved to a different room to sleep, I started googling and learned that was not a good idea. So, while we are getting ready to attempt a removal, I moved back to our room and have been taking Benadryl at night to try to minimize bite reactions, and also using a tea tree oil lotion to help with healing the bites. Other than doing laundry, now that we know what we're dealing with we have left the bed and the drawers underneath undisturbed so far. I am almost afraid to open them, they haven't been opened in ages and are full of old assorted clothing.
Due to the lice we had been doing lots of laundering and I had recently washed my main quilted blanket that was usually tucked in at the bottom of the bed. As I was about to bag it today, I noticed a line of "dirt", along a seam that would have been tucked between the mattress and bed frame. Perhaps that area was a harbor, before it went into the laundry? Washed and dried it again just to be certain to kill anything that might have still been lurking there...
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So anyway, here is the plan we have come up with, so far:
We have cleaned out space in my son's room (he has not slept there for a couple years, just keeps clothing there, so it seems likely to be uninfested) and will put the bagged clean laundry there.
Once we have the bedroom decluttered enough, we will pull off the mattress, dump everything from the bed base drawers into the trash, and vacuum it all thoroughly. I have Murphy's soap to use to clean the bed frame. I have food grade DE, pest pistol and paint sanding respirator ready (I figured, dust). I also bought Ortho bedbug/flea killer.
So I have some general notion to spray the mattress with the Ortho (label says it is non-staining and ok to use on fabrics). When we are putting the bed back together, I would use the puffer to dust with the DE everywhere around the bed frame and also around the bases of all the walls - will leave the base drawers empty with just dust in, dust on the boards the mattress sits on, and all around the head and foot boards and under the bed. Possibly also dust on the floor all the way around the bed once it's set back up, in cracks and crevices, etc. My thinking is that, since they are going to want to get to me for a snack, if I make sure that to do so they will have to cross the dust, the problem should resolve itself in not too long. (after 6 months pf fighting headlice, a few more weeks or whatever does not seem too daunting for me to keep taking benadryl and treating bites).
Once we have gone through our room, which I believe has the major infestation, we would move onto the other rooms and proceed similarly.
Isolation of the bed is not possible since the captain's style frame has no legs. I do not think encasement would be helpful. It is a memory foam mattress so it should not have any bugs inside. I do use an allergenic cover already. Not sure what, if anything, I should do regarding the space between the bed frame (some large plywood boards that the waterbed mattress used to sit on) and the mattress. Would it be ok to have DE under the mattress, between it and the boards it sits on? I did buy a tarp also, that could possibly go under the mattress with the DE under that?
Wondering also if we should make a barrier from the room (DE across the doorway?) before we disturb the mattress. Would that keep bugs from fleeing to other areas of the house?
Should I add more methods to what I have assembled above? I found references from a few years ago to certain products that I was not able to locate. I can't afford the fancy oven to bake our possessions. Is that really necessary? Won't the bugs, wherever they are hiding, all eventually need to get to me, and cross over the DE barrier if I keep that maintained?
We have a chute down to the laundry room in the bathroom that is next down the hall from our bedroom. Since this is the case, do I really need to bag (dirty) laundry? We have been using it all along so it seems like any spreading of bugs would have already been done long ago, if they were going to spread.
Anyway, sorry for the long winded post. Suggestions would be appreciated, especially low budget ones. Thanks for your time.