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Blog post:
An Itchy Bed...
by MEDIC Instructor-Trainer
Matthew Rosefsky
November 2017
What are these?
Marked scale = 1cm. Each little division = 1 mm.
As a traveling wilderness medicine instructor, I stay in a lot of motels.
Here comes an experiential learning adventure …
I recently stayed in a motel in the Washington DC area. It was such a delightful
Friday afternoon – arrived way earlier than I usually do, enjoyed the large
motel room with big windows / lots of natural light, spent a peaceful, pleasant
afternoon catching up on work and planning out my next week. It felt great
getting ahead, so I wouldn't feel as swamped as I usually do on Monday morning
coming home from a class and having much course wrap-up administrative work to
do, in addition to replying to emails which came in over the weekend, and
needing to create a list of tasks I would need to accomplish that week. So nice
to get ahead and know that the coming Monday would be significantly more
pleasant than usual. When happily done work-planning, I went to the front desk
to thank the agent for having put me in such a nice corner room, and then with
many restaurants right in the area, I enjoyed walking to get Chinese take-out,
followed by relaxing that evening to a nice movie while catching up on
newsletters.
Time for bed! All was great, and 11pm was nicely early for me. Except I woke up
at around midnight, feeling a few body parts (a lower leg, a lower arm)
generally a bit itchy. I wondered, hm, I'm not allergic to anything as far as I
know (except pollen seasonally), but perhaps there was some new detergent I
hadn't encountered before which was causing that. Well, still half-asleep, I
stayed put and went back to sleep. An hour later I awoke again with the same
general widespread itchy feeling on a few body parts, got up, took one Benadryl
in case it was an allergic reaction (too half-asleep to investigate), and went
back to sleep. Slept great straight through to my alarm.
The morning shower is my coffee. My mind sometimes has bright thoughts and
creative new ideas at this time. AHA, I thought to myself. After drying off, I
go to the bed, pull back the sheets, and what do I find???
Two dead bed bugs right in the middle of the bed.
I took the plastic container which had last night's hot & sour soup in it,
rinsed it out, dried it, put the dead bugs in there, sealed the top, opened my
laptop computer to look at pictures of bed bugs to confirm, and yep, i.d.
confirmed.
I learned that one doesn't really know what something looks like until you see
it in person. Bed bugs look very similar to ticks, so actually when I was
looking at them I also wondered, could they be ticks? Looking more closely, the
legs did not look the same. Bed bugs are around the same size as ticks through,
and roughly the same shape, so pretty similar.
Only once before some years ago at a motel in Baltimore, did I enjoy the wrath
of bed bugs. That time, I could not find any in the bed. They're experts at
hiding. They're also experts at something else, as you will learn at the end of
this story. Anyhow, though I didn't find any the last time, I knew that they
were bed bugs because: "breakfast, lunch, and dinner." "Breakfast, lunch, and
dinner." Imprint that in your mind as the SOLO Dr. Hubbell did on my mind in his
www.WildernessMedicineNewsetter.com article about bed bugs. Generally speaking,
bed bugs tend to make series of three bites fairly adjacent to each other.
"Breakfast, lunch, and dinner." That first time, I had exactly that in a few
places. This time around, I had a series of three bites on the side of my thumb
straight in a line about a centimeter long total; on my lower arm there were
three bigger bites but more spread out perhaps over 7 inches; and other places
on my body had patterns of three while some did not. In all I had around 25
bites. Woohoo!
Literature states that bed bugs are not vectors for (transmitters of) disease,
so that's good news.
Back to the story. It was Saturday morning, I had a class of 23 people to go
lead-teach at a new location, and no time to spare. I went to the front desk,
simply showed them the container and said "I think you know what these are,"
told them that I didn't have time to deal with this right now but obviously I'll
need a different room for tonight and for now I need three or four big black
plastic trash bags. He obliged, I returned to motel room, put anything that was
not on a desk or dresser surface into those bags, tied them up, put them in my
car, and headed to class to start setting up. Fortunately I had left most of my
course supplies in the car overnight, so those items were safe. Things that were
on the bed, carpeted floor, fabric easy chair were not safe. My plan was to
display those black plastic bags in the car windows during the day, hoping it
would get hot and sunny and the bags would bake the contents inside – literature
says if you get them up to 120 deg. F for a while, they die. I didn't know if
there were bugs in there, or eggs, etc. Well, unfortunately it didn't get hot or
sunny enough for that to work.
Class went great, co-instructor Alli was awesome, we dined together and chatted
that evening, then back to the motel. Moved to a different, not-adjacent room
(the room I was in had a connecting door), completely stripped the beds and
lifted the mattresses upside down to look all around for bugs or their poop; all
seemed to be in the clear. Felt better, went to sleep, no added itchy-ness
overnight. Pulled back the sheets the next morning, and …
… nothing to find :) Checked out of the motel, co-taught the class, drove home.
Super-busy week, no time to deal with any of this stuff, put the black plastic
bags on my apartment balcony to sit out there until I had time to deal with
them. Then, seven days after finding the two dead bed bugs, I took them out of
the container to take the photo shown here, for your viewing pleasure. After
placing the bugs in position on a table, while taking photos, I realized hm, a
flashlight would be helpful, so I went to the closet to get one and came back
some seconds later. What I observed surprised the heck out of me.
One bug had moved.
One was alive!!!!!!!! I was *shocked!* No food, no water in that plastic
container. That technique is what I used for all of those ticks I've plucked off
of people and now pass around in class. Unbelievable! Sure enough, Wilderness
Medicine Newsletter reports that they can go 5 or 6 days without a meal. Based
on activity I saw, I think the one live one ate the contents of the dead one.
Thus in addition to being experts at hiding, they are experts at playing dead.
Beware!
The picture here is 7 days after their meal. They did look different when I
first found them, but this gives an idea anyway, especially for dimension (the
ruler is marked in centimeters, each little section is a millimeter).
That same day, I sprayed permethrin (yes, the same stuff we teach is ideal for
spraying onto your clothing, shoes, hats, tents, gear, etc. to fend off ticks
and flying insects) into the black plastic bags (outside on balcony) and quickly
resealed them. I ruffled the bags during spraying to get the spray
well-distributed. After a week of being fumigated in the bags, I put what could
go into the laundry machine, washed hot and dried hot -- that's the key, they'll
die in the dryer. Permethrin alone should be good enough if they're in it for
several days, so the wash & dry was a back-up. Outside I inspected what could
not go in a washer; all clear. By that time, anything in there had been without
a meal for two weeks, and in a permethrin vapor for one week.
Quite a crummy ordeal, especially for a busy person. Lesson learned: don't place
belongings on motel beds, fabric chairs, or floors. Put on luggage stand,
dresser or desk surfaces. Any cheap motel through 5-star hotel can have bed
bugs, thanks to the last guest there having brought them in on their stuff. One
just never knows. The less possibly-contaminated stuff you have to deal with
afterwards, the much, much better. Definitely not worth the one free motel
night!
Happy adventuring,
Matt
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