The worst part was that I had to throw away my favorite pillow.
I’ve cherished it for 15 years. I know you should get rid of them sooner, but this pillow is filled with down and is perfectly soft and malleable, but not too malleable.
I’ve always been the person who takes my pillow on road trips. It’s hard to sleep without it. It will cost me at least $ 100 to replace it. And the new one will still be wrong.
But I am beside myself. Because I seem to have bed bugs.
CONTINUE READING:
* Three huts on the Whanganui Journey Great Walk have been closed due to bed bug attacks.
* DOC cabin with the ‘toughest bed bugs known to mankind’ that needs to be closed for overhaul
* Meet the women trying to change life and work during menopause
I slept two hours one night that week. It’s been 10 nights with less than six hours of sleep. I itch everywhere – legs, back, neck, arms.
I took an antihistamine tablet at night for a week thinking maybe something was wrong with me, eczema-type hypersensitivity.
I actually couldn’t find any bed bugs in cracks and crevices that they seem to be hanging out in. But I finally caught someone biting me.
SCOPE OF DELIVERY
A particularly nasty attack from suspected bed bugs.
I pressed it to death, my own blood oozed out. I put this bad guy on a piece of handkerchief and got a positive ID the next morning with the help of google.
Sigh. I love bed. I am fortunate to have a fantastic mattress. So thick, heavy and comfortable with one of these toppers on either side.
But I thought of burning it. I thought – in the early hours of the morning when I scratch and scratch and scratch – burn the whole house down.
JERRY LAMPS / Reuters
Thinking in the middle of the night: Why does no one see the superiority of KD Lang’s version of Hallelujah?
The pursued stream of awareness scroll is vicious: my life sucks. I hate everyone and everything. Every little failure and pain that has accumulated over 50 years has come back to torment me during those long periods of itchy wakefulness: the times I posted the wrong comment on the wrong thread on Messenger; how I published a story with the phrase “Buckle Down” when I meant “Knuckle Down”; all the things I’ve ever eaten that I shouldn’t have because they were too sugary, carbonated, junkie, white. How nobody agrees with me that KD Lang has the best version of Hallelujah. How everything in my life is wrong and bad and itches and itches.
I thought it might be menopause. I thought it might be Morgellons Syndrome. I checked my dog for fleas.
The first pest control company I called said we don’t. “The best treatment is to throw everything away – the bed, the mattress, everything.” People just keep ringing the doorbell, she said. We want to guarantee our treatments, but they are so difficult to get rid of.
In the second company, the man said, “Did you actually see them? We get a lot of people who think they have bed bugs and actually it isn’t. There can be many reasons why you are itchy. “
But bless him, he told me to send a photo of the one I took red-handed at 2am.
Ty Carlson / Unsplash
Bed bugs hide in crevices of mattresses, bed frames, walls and come out at night to feed.
It’s probably only 4mm long, and my phone camera isn’t the best for macro photography, but even so, while sending the picture through, I have a picture of my head of Andrew and colleagues who have gathered around the computer and nod wisely with a happy siren in the background, as they positively identify it.
But I didn’t hear back until reaching out to the third company. This person didn’t ask anything – just told me when they were available and warned me about the price – at least $ 150 per room.
If you sleep an average of five hours a night, give them your firstborn child’s still-beating heart. I made the booking.
DOC
The North Arm Hut on the Rakiura Track is closed until June 3rd to control bed bug infestation.
Where did these little fools come from? I didn’t trample and stay in huts, otherwise nobody slept in my bed. These things cannot just conjure up from nowhere.
On the website of the Ministry of Health, in my opinion, it says too cheerfully: “Many people take bed bugs in their luggage when they travel. You can also bring them home in used furniture, bedding, or clothing. “
The only second hand thing I can think of is an old style school desk that I used as a bedside table. But it’s been there for weeks and was previously used in my daughter’s bedroom with no ill effects.
123RF
Bed bugs can be picked up in luggage when traveling.
The Rentokil woman rides in on her white horse. I love her right away.
A little later she comes out in her white protective overalls with the gas mask under her chin: “I gave the room a heavy dose,” she says. “I’ve turned everything around. It looks like a bombshell. “
You need to hot wash all of your clothes and linens and then tumble dry them for at least half an hour, she says. She says not to go in for three hours. I will do whatever it takes.
Modern technologies are used to use drill-infested wood sustainably for residential purposes, as can be seen in this cabin prototype from the New York design company Hannah.
The room remains empty for the time being. But one day I have to put the heat-treated laundry back on the bed, bring my houseplants back into the now gassed air and hang my pictures on the wall again.
I’ll take the risk of lying there in the dark. I will rid myself of all thoughts of plague. And I’m going to sleep desperately to come.
