What possibility is there for mental sanity when BED BUGS are present?

I couldn’t sleep knowing there were bed bugs in my bed. I get itchy just thinking about it. Is there anywhere else you can stay for a few days to get some sleep? If not, maybe you could try to find something that will distract you right before bed and make you really tired so you fall asleep fast.

No. Burn.

Oh Jesus this sounds hellish…. just reading the wiki article about them last month made me feel like I was potentially living in a horror movie. I second @Seaofclouds, could you stay with a friend til the exterminator comes again?

Harvard bed-bug tips

I feel your pain. A few years back, I moved into an apartment where the previous tenants had been total slobs. The bed bugs were horrifying! After being devoured by bed bugs nightly, I quickly called an exterminator, tossed my mattress, and washed everything I owned. I crashed at a friends house until the exterminator was finished, and thankfully, I was able to get rid of them on the first try. All I can say is: clean, clean, clean. Those suckers can hide anywhere. Hopefully your exterminator can get rid of the vile little creatures.

The trouble with bed bugs is that the hide in the smallest of cracks in walls etc. It may take a few days to get rid off them, but there is no guarantee. You should wash your clothes in hot hot hot water. Also, they can remain dormant for months and months. They do travel far, so they could move out and walk away or travel in your luggage. YOu may need some cream for the bites.

I was told NOT to sleep anywhere else because I would just spread it. I am getting like 20–30 bites a night. I have roommates. We are all relatively clean. This just sucks because I am the only one getting pummeled here!

I’m with @SundayKittens. Burn the place to the ground, say that aliens did it and rebuild with what the insurance gives you. If you get caught for fraud, just claim temporary insanity due to lack of sleep.

Really though, that sucks. I’ve been fortunate enough never to have to deal with them. I would suggest maybe sleeping on the couch or in your roommates floor? And definitely get some sort of cream as @Hawkeye mentioned. Hopefully the exterminator can take them out for you.

Bedbugs are taking over NYC. Good luck.

Well, if the Ivy League Bed Bug Guide is to be believed, the air mattress is part of your problem. You need a bed on legs, with no bedspread or any other cloth that touches the ground. Put the legs of the bed in cups of mineral oil. According to them, bedbugs are climber/walkers. Make sure your clothing is hung up only.

If you can live with the smell of it, better than the bugs… pour gasoline over everything you can, and that will kill them. That’s what they say people used to do in the motels along what would eventually become the interstates in the country.

@FR07en If you poured gasoline on everything, wouldn’t you just be asking for a fire? I’m pretty sure that’s worse than bedbugs.

Not according to the memoirs I’ve read of the folks that traveled on Route 66 before it was even paved. They said it was either that or be eaten alive by the things. I agree, it’s entirely scary to even have gasoline on your bed and what not. I don’t know further what happened, I mean, when they left the next morning. They said it was due to the influx of immigrants to the US at that time. Everyone was driving old Fords on the nasty roads and wanting to stop with their families at the motels. I think they took their own bedding… maybe, other than the mattresses that came with the rented room. Then I suppose, if you put the gas on there to kill the bugs, you should be able to then wash your stuff afterwards… again, everything but the mattress. It’s just what I read somewhere that the travelers on the new interstates used to do when they thought they might encounter the bedbugs in the motels.

…come to think of it, perhaps it was kerosene and not gasoline they used. That might make more sense, actually. I’m trying right now to locate the text that I read it in originally. Sorry if I made a mistake as to whether it was one or the other fuel that they used, but it was either gas or kerosene, of that I’m certain now.

@FR07en Interesting. Thanks for the clarification.

You’re welcome, and in line with that, but obviously not the answer to this thread’s original question, I did find one of the texts that suggests that bed bugs were prevalent in the travels of people on Route 66 when it was a newer road:

Source:
Route 66: The Highway and Its People
by Susan Croce Kelly, Quinta Scott
Chapter title: Business and Ballyhoo p. 37 par 4:
”in 1921, when a national system of paved highways was still not much more than a dream, Cyrus Avery built twenty-five one-room tourists cabins, a service station, and a resturant on the edge of a farm that he owned outside Tulsa. ‘Each one of the individual units had a fireplace out in front of the door to fix meals and things like that,’ remembered Leighton Avery. ‘For washing, though, the guest had to go over to the central building which had showers and tubs—concrete tubs.People at the tourist court were expected to provide their own cooking utensils and food, plus bed linens, towels, and wash cloths.’ Nobody was suprised at that—most automobile travelers were used to camping out in those days, and cabins, cooking space, and a bathhouse were real luxuries.”