What could these strange bug bites (??) be?

Chiggers maybe? Are you outside often?

@redfeather I’m outside a lot, particularly since it is summer, but these don’t look like chigger bites. It hardly look like anything at all, actually. The mark itself is tiny… until I scratch. Then it’s a blood blister. Every time, it turns into a blood blister. It never turns into an actual blister, but the area around it pools with blood. Weirdest thing.

Could it be something unexpected, like gnats or I don’t know?

I’m trying to get a photo of the one on my thumb, although there really isn’t much to see.

It might not be bites. Bugs are opportunistic, and they will bite whenever there’s an opportunity. If it were a bug that’s biting you, likely it would be biting on other parts of your body.

My guess is that you are allergic to something, maybe lotion or hand soap, or something else that only touches your hands. I’ve also had an infection that itched as badly as you describe. See what happens if you don’t scratch it. Does it grow a pimple?

My daughter has a problem like that, and the doctor (after many years) concluded it wasn’t herpes after all, but something else. Sorry, I don’t remember what it was. It may require a skin scraping and a culture to sort it out.

Perhaps you are suffering from Scabies itch mites. Bites look Like this Or maybe a skin fungal infection.

@snowberry no, it doesn’t grow a pimple. There is no head, no blister, nothing. It’s just a tiny bump. If I scratch it turns into a blood blister, otherwise nothing. It goes away in a few days. It’s very strange.
This is the one on my thumb… which I obviously scratched. The only reason that I even noticed it this time is because I felt the blood pop up under there when I was scratching. So bizarre.

@gondwanalon all of the bug bites along those lines that I have Googled appear to cause blistering or irritation to the surrounding skin. I don’t really know what to think, but maybe it is some type of mite.

Do you know what the poison ivy or poison oak rash looks like? Do you have lots of it in your area?

And there is now the new concern about bed bugs.

@gailcalled yeah, my husband has poison ivy all of the time. I’m 99.9% that I’m immune to it. I rolled around in it, walked through, it fell into it a million times growing up and never had a reaction. My parents have never had it, either. I don’t know if it is a hereditary thing, but we have all just always assumed that we don’t get it.

Though, my husband and my kids just recently had poison ivy…. maybe it could be a really minor reaction!

As for bed bugs, I’m sure it is a possibility. But, I am paranoid about bed bugs. I check my mattress every time I change the linens and whatnot. Bed bugs are probably one of my biggest fears.

@ANef_is_Enuf: You can be immune to poison ivy until one day…poof… you’re not.

I was at the doctor’s last week to have her check a bite that turned out to be a bruise and not t bull’s eye tick rash, and she asked me whether I had been traveling recently. There’s apparently a huge upsurge in the bed bug population, sorry to say.

@gailcalled can you get bed bugs without traveling? My husband and I haven’t been on vacation in over 7 years. We haven’t stayed at any hotels, or brought luggage or purses or anyone into the house recently that has been traveling. Is there another way that they can enter the home?

They’re like Typhoid Mary. The vector could be anywhere. And they can enter the home in countless ways…friends, delivery people, pets, vampires for all I know.

Another reason that I feel inclined to rule out bed bugs is that no one else in the household seems to have anything similar. We’ll see, though. If they start multiplying I’m calling in an exterminator fast enough to make your head spin. :)

I’m not a doctor but it looks like some sort of recurring infection….Doctor’s on his way though (for what good it will do. He’ll probably tell you that you have ED.)

Can’t be chiggers, of course. They gather around at your pants line and other nooks and crannies. In high school a….uh… friend….of mine once counted 124 chigger bites on me. Not going to go into detail of how how they got there!

Poison ivy would display in different parts of your body I would think. Not confined to just your feet and hands. But I don’t know.
I would think that bed bugs would display on different parts of your body too. The hands and feet would be the most inconvenient for them, I would think, because they’re so bony. (Bed bugs are annoying, BTW, but harmless.)

It looks like a sand fly bite. Where I live, there are many of them and they make that similar wound. If you scratch it it turns into what you describe. Sand flies are minute little flies like the horse fly but it got its name because it is as small as a grain of sand. I live in the tropics, so I am accustomed to them, but its summer time over where you live so I suppose that could be your vermin.

Here are some photos of various flea, midge, spider, mosquito, ant and otherbug bites. They are hard to differentiate. Bite me.

Where do you live?

Could be dust mites or bed bugs.

It’s flea season. If you have cats or dogs, i would bet fleas.

@Pandora: dust mites are microscopic and do not leave bites. Their feces cause allergic reactions.

Are they specifically on the sides of your thumb and fingers?
It could be fungal. The term “athlete’s foot” covers a range of fungal infections, some of which have itchy bumps on the fingers and feet as a symptom. Looks very much like your photo, and the bumps come back in the same spot. It doesn’t mean there’s a fungal infection on the hands, but somewhere on the body, and the finger bumps are a symptom.

could it be a wart? they like to reappear in the same spot

It isn’t a wart. Maybe a flea bite. I have no clue.

I didn’t expect that we would necessarily be able to figure it out, I just thought perhaps it might be something really obvious that another jelly would recognize, but that I might not.

It’s flea season, fleas can infest your yard from stray animals even if you don’t have pets. I am infested as we speak, and hoping that the exterminator, Frontline and flea collars does the trick. Exterminator came Tuesday and I have not had any bites since then. The fleas are nocturnal, and I would wake up with very itchy feet, legs, and arms. It’s getting better now, but those bites, when they’re new, are extremely itchy. I still scratch them and make them bleed. People at work are asking ‘What happened to you?” and I tell them it’s mosquito bites.

Flea sounds right but…always in the same places? In thin skinned boney areas? That doesn’t sound right….

I’ve got the same thing going on too! It’s not bedbugs, not fleas, and not once have I been able to see what is biting me. No one is the house, including my husband has them. They itch like crazy and keep itching until they finally go away. Sure would like to know what it is and what to do about it!