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A little recap: we went to Florida, we came back. A few days later, my daughter had bug bites. Including on her eyelids. I was like, must have come home on the stuffie. Must be bed bugs. I learned a lot about bed bugs, isolated her bunk beds and my bed, and we got from Saturday night through Tuesday night with no new bug bites on anyone (she had no fresh bites as of Friday night). Terminix came out yesterday, found no evidence of bed bugs, and he thinks it wasn’t bed bugs at all, because of the numerousness of the bites right from the start. He was thinking mites.
Yesterday, I had a great phone convo with A., about her recent health woes (I was really worried about her for a while there, but fingers crossed she sounds like she is through the worst of it). We talked a bit about when she thought she had bed bugs years ago, and it turned out not to be bed bugs, but some kind of mites. Which is what the Terminix guy was saying.
I was still on the fence about the whole thing, but figured, well, I take way less allergy medication now that I’ve encased everything, also, mites can’t fly or jump so the same isolation techniques that work for bed bugs ought to be effective against mites. And I got to wondering if flying squirrels have mites.
Meanwhile, just before 9, my son is sitting on his bed with the lights on and _feels_ something biting him by his hairline. He comes down, same bite pattern. There’s no way that’s bed bug behavior. We send him through the shower, get him into clean clothes, explain again in detail the protocol for bed isolation and put him to bed in one of the isolated beds (his isn’t yet). I’m now convinced it is mites BUT conveniently, Terminix guy said if we got bites but couldn’t capture a bug, to send whoever had the bites to a dermatologist to have it inspected under magnification. And guess who has a wart treatment appointment at a dermatologist on Thursday afternoon. I’ll draft a letter requesting the bites to be checked at the same time. Tomorrow. I’m going to chalk this one up to a heavily disguised blessing.
If it _is_ mites, and especially if it _was_ from the flying squirrel infestation, the good news is that this will probably self resolve in a few weeks at most. And bed isolation should protect us from the worst of it. And, hey good news: my allergies are way better than they have been in years. And it isn’t some magical improvement unrelated to the bedding. Whenever I encounter some kind of allergen, I’m reacting like crazy. I just don’t sneeze or sniffle when I go to bed anymore. Lesson learned.
Yesterday, I had a great phone convo with A., about her recent health woes (I was really worried about her for a while there, but fingers crossed she sounds like she is through the worst of it). We talked a bit about when she thought she had bed bugs years ago, and it turned out not to be bed bugs, but some kind of mites. Which is what the Terminix guy was saying.
I was still on the fence about the whole thing, but figured, well, I take way less allergy medication now that I’ve encased everything, also, mites can’t fly or jump so the same isolation techniques that work for bed bugs ought to be effective against mites. And I got to wondering if flying squirrels have mites.
Meanwhile, just before 9, my son is sitting on his bed with the lights on and _feels_ something biting him by his hairline. He comes down, same bite pattern. There’s no way that’s bed bug behavior. We send him through the shower, get him into clean clothes, explain again in detail the protocol for bed isolation and put him to bed in one of the isolated beds (his isn’t yet). I’m now convinced it is mites BUT conveniently, Terminix guy said if we got bites but couldn’t capture a bug, to send whoever had the bites to a dermatologist to have it inspected under magnification. And guess who has a wart treatment appointment at a dermatologist on Thursday afternoon. I’ll draft a letter requesting the bites to be checked at the same time. Tomorrow. I’m going to chalk this one up to a heavily disguised blessing.
If it _is_ mites, and especially if it _was_ from the flying squirrel infestation, the good news is that this will probably self resolve in a few weeks at most. And bed isolation should protect us from the worst of it. And, hey good news: my allergies are way better than they have been in years. And it isn’t some magical improvement unrelated to the bedding. Whenever I encounter some kind of allergen, I’m reacting like crazy. I just don’t sneeze or sniffle when I go to bed anymore. Lesson learned.