A few weeks ago, I began noticing bug bites and they became consistent and noticed it was happening at night. Mark on the other hand has yet to have a bite; apparently about only 30% of people have a reaction to bed bugs. While visiting friends in Chicago a few years back, I experienced bed bugs for the first time. I came home with over 100 bites on just one leg alone (it was horrible!), so when I was only having a few, I wasn't convinced it was bed bugs. Considering we have "stray cat city" outside our building, I was thinking it was flees. Well after about a week and doing some further research, I was more convinced it was bed bugs and needed to investigate.
Last Friday after service, we investigated our mattress and frame for any remains of bedbugs. This was a lot more difficult than I anticipated, which is one reason why I am posting pictures. We stripped our bed of bedding and began looking for anything that resembled blood stains from a bug or a shell. At first, we didn't see anything that appeared to be one of those things. We noticed the black marks on the end of the bed (refer to picture). I immediately went on the computer to search if that was an indicator and sure enough it was. After more investigating, we found a shell and then saw our first bed bug in the bed frame. I absolutely HATE bugs, especially where I sleep, so this was quite disturbing for me. Lets just say Mark was doing more of the investigating while I watched from a further distance. Mark and I didn't know what to do, but I immediately went and told everyone in our building. Yes, I had to be "that person" knocking on everyones' door to say we had bed bugs and they needed to check if they did, too. Luckily we know most of the people in our building, as they all work at EMS, and there are only a total of 8 flats in our entire building.
(picture above has the shell and some of the black marks)
(look for these black marks on the edges of your bed for signs of bed bugs...this should be done when you go to a hotel, too)
When I went to one of our next door neighbor's, who is from Egypt and doesn't speak English very well, I was able to decipher that he has had bedbugs for a couple of months. I was quite upset that he didn't tell anyone in the building or school for that matter, to help get rid of them. I have come to conclusion he was just uneducated on the matter, but school told us they would talk to him about the severity of bedbugs and the importance of telling them right away if he sees/has evidence of bed bugs.
One of our neighbor's encouraged us to throw away our mattress, which we did immediately. It was pretty gross to see the mattress once it reached the heat of Doha outside. We saw numerous itty bitty bed bugs crawling out of it and all over the place, as they don't like the heat. I wrote on the mattress to encourage others to not take it (see picture), but unfortunately it was gone within the next few hours. I did what I could...I also tried to tell our neighbor with the bed bugs to throw away his mattress, but he didn't understand me. To help the situation, I showed him a picture of our bed by the dumpster, but he didn't want to throw his away.
That night we ended up staying in a hotel, as we originally were going to sleep in our place, but at 11:30 at night we saw remains of a bed bug on our couch. The exterminators came the following morning to spray our entire floor. Our neighbor, where we think the bed bugs were originated, did not want his entire place sprayed. I almost had a panic attack and informed the maintenance representative at the building and our head of maintenance that it needed to be done. Luckily, it was done. We went to the mall with our neighbors on the other side of us, Troy and Maureen, to kill time while the exterminators were fumigating our places. As far as we know only two flats had the bugs, but three were fumigated for preventative measures.
We were blessed to have some of our Doha parents take us in for the next few days while we waited for our bed to arrive. In our small group we have several sets of "parents" here who take care of us. So, Mark and I stayed in their compound for a few nights and then came back on Tuesday for the mattress delivery. We received a phone call that night to tell us they couldn't deliver the mattress anymore and it would come the next day. So, we stayed at our neighbor's below us, in her spare bed. Then, on Wednesday evening they delivered our mattress, to then find out that school ordered the wrong size and it was too small. This truly became the never ending bed bug saga... We slept on the small bed that night and then they delivered the new one the following day. Which, by the way we did have to pay for, as we were informed we threw away school property. They were sympathetic about the situation, but needed to follow protocol.
(small bed that was delivered, they told me "they will deliver the right size the next day en shallah (God willing)", and am glad that it was actually delivered when they said it would be)
So, after nearly a week we are finally back in our flat with our new bed. We bagged pretty much our entire place and have some of it on our roof "frying", trying to ensure that the exterminator killed everything in here. We are in the process of washing our stuff and cleaning everything! This has been quite an annoying process and don't wish it upon anyone. So, look at the pictures so you can identify if you have bed bugs or not and try to catch it early.
Sleeping has been a bit interesting as I am still quite freaked out, and am having horrible dreams about bugs. Unfortunately, yesterday we took a nap in the afternoon and I awoke later to find a couple of bites on my face and one on my hand. So, our saga continues and we are just counting down the days until we are out of here for several weeks. We are going to contact school today about the recent bites, but do know they plan on coming again with the exterminator right after we leave for the summer...so we'll see what happens.
Your Bed Bug Hater,
Kristin
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