SOLUTION FROM BRASIL!!!!!

[Guest guest]

We would like to share our story with everyone that comes to this

website for answers, and hopefully our example will help some people.

Our nightmare started when we moved Dallas, Texas, in a lovely art

deco apartment. The building had just been restored, and we were the

first tenants in our apartment. As soon as we moved in we opened the

windows so we could get fresh air. And in the first night we felt

some bites. We imagined that we either had dust mites and that they

had bothered us so much because we spent our first night on the floor

(we hadn't had time to put our futon together yet). Next day we

scrubbed down the floors. We had wonderful hardwood floors which made

the job easier. But next day we felt the bugs again. We bought flea

powder and spread it all over the house. We returned the futon and

bought a nicer one from a fancy store. That didn't solve the problem

either. Then we called our landlord and told him about the problem.

By then we had observed that there were many bird nests on the roof,

and we thought that might be the cause of our problem. While we

waited for some action from the landlord, we sprayed Raid all over

the place. At first the landlord believed us and after some days he

called a pest control guy. But the pest guy just put some glue traps

in the apartment, and because he didn't catch anything he said we had

nothing in there. The fact is that we believe the Raid killed the

little monsters for a while. After this episode it got quite cold,

and we didn't feel anything anymore until summertime came.

Coincidence or not, when it was hot we decided to take a trip, and

got our luggage that was stored in the attic of the building. That

was when we started feeling the creatures again. The problem was that

we sprayed the house with Raid again, and we didn't feel any better

this time. On the contrary, we could barely sleep… sometimes we would

get out of the house just to get some rest from the bites and

itchiness. We tried to talk to our landlord again and ask him to

release us from the lease, but he said we had no reason to demand

that and that he would let us out only if we caught the creatures and

proved our point scientifically, seeing that he had done his due

diligence and called pest control. So we bought a microscope and

started hunting for bird mites! We spent many hours, but finally we

got some of them and sent them to the lab at the University of

Florida (A local university just insinuated that we had a psychosis

when the landlord called them to inquire about it). Our samples came

back positive and the landlord was obliged to release us from our

contract.

We were very careful before we entered our new home. We washed ever

single thing that we had that could be washed. Things that we could

not wash we put in a storage space and left it there, imagine, in the

summer of Texas, covered with poison. We used roach bombs, and even

soaked our belongings with a super strong product from Bayer to be

used outside only, made 20 times stronger than recommended. We got

rid of our furniture. Then we moved to our new home sweet home.

But soon we had a bad surprise. We started feeling bites again. In

our first night it was sort of bad, but it became worse and worse. In

the first a month we had had the pest control guys to come over three

times, we had spread Borax all over our carpet, we had used about

five roach bombs in the house, and we had covered our entire house

with the same awful chemical from Bayer three times (which of course

was great for our immune systems!). And we still felt them. We became

completely hopeless. Nobody believed us. We talked to entomologists,

pest control personnel, and we were treated as if we were total

freaks.

In our despair we made a drastic decision. We decided to quit our

jobs, give up everything and go back to Brazil taking only some

clothes right out of the washer and the computer.

So we went to a hotel, took a long shower with everything that we

knew that made us feel better(such as Epsom salts, vinegar, etc.),

washed and packed some of our clothes and left to catch our plane. We

threw away pretty much everything that we had.

But when we were waiting at the airport we still felt bites. How

could it be? We had washed ourselves very well, we were wearing clean

clothes, and we still felt them…

We called our family and told them to make hotel reservations for us.

We could not go to our family's house full of bugs.

As soon as we got to Brazil we went to a motel, took a long bath,

changed into clothes that had never been in the US, and went to a

hotel. We were sure that this time we were free of them. Maybe they

were in our clothes from the States, but now we were wearing clothes

that hadn't been in contact with the bugs.

During the night, however, we still felt bites and felt them crawling

as usual. We just cried and prayed. There was nothing else that we

could do. We were sure that they had colonized our bodies.

But our family helped by calling several doctors. We spent a month

going from doctor to doctor, taking several medications to fight our

parasites, but with no result. We lived in a different place every

week, but we were still infested. We paid the equivalent of $700 to

have our computer and clothes treated with ethylene oxide (a

seriously toxic sterilization process) at a medical lab. We even

tried to turn ourselves in to the local health/epidemiology

department, but they didn't believe it was a real problem.

Finally, when a relative of ours talked to a veterinarian about our

problem, he said that he knew somebody the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in

Rio de Janeiro, who was a veterinarian and had a PhD in entomology-

specifically mites. We had nothing to loose, so we went to see him.

We thank this man from the depth of our hearts. He gave us answers to

all of our problems, and gave us hope again. He explained to us that

we, in reality, were not colonized by bird mites; we had gotten rid

of them a long, long time ago. Our problem, (why didn't we think of

it- duh!) was that our immune systems, on contact with the bites

quickly developed an allergic reaction to any kind of mites or other

micro-pests. There are always plenty of little creatures in our

environment and on us, and we normally never feel them. But having

been exposed to these specific types of bites, we became super-

sensitized to all mites and micro-ants. Our immune systems would

produce welts, rashes, etc just on contact with any beastie. The

solution was to desensitize ourselves and get our immune systems off

of hyperdrive. This was accomplished with two anti allergy

medicines: Allegra every morning and Hydroxizine this is a

transliteration from Portuguese, check on the real English name) at

bedtime for 2 months. The professor, Dr. Nicolau Maués, told us that

many Brazilians and also foreigners come to see him in the same

situation that we were.

He sent us to see an allergy specialist, Dr ina Ezequiel, in

Juiz de Fora, MG, who ordered some exams to check our allergy levels.

She told us to go back home immediately, and hug and kiss everyone we

loved, because we didn't have anything contagious.

We went through this treatment and now we can say that we are pretty

much back to normal. On some rare passing moments we might briefly

feel a crawling sensation. Recently, on contact with someone who had

head lice, I developed an ugly rash which went away with Propionate

of Clobetazol lotion. Nevertheless we are so relieved to discover

that there are no maniacal mites pursuing us-- just the normal

creatures that are around every single person in this world.

We hope that our story can help those who already did everything

imaginable and couldn't find a solution… try treating it as an

allergy!