Re: Seeking guidance please

[Guest guest]

Hello. I am sorry to hear of your experience, it truly is a nightmare.

Can you transfer to another facility? I cannot believe they are suspending people. No wonder this problem is so out of control. You can bet they are aware of the problem and money to control it is the root. If what is in my home is in a building, which we already know there are many it would seem, they would have to shut it down. Gieshhh, no wonder so many people are walking around with this crap and don't know it.

You mentioned a cat. Poor thing. Cats are so very hard to treat as many things including permethrin or pyrenthian compounds are so very toxic and deadly to them. Cover her in DE. If she grooms, it will not poison her, and may help to act as a internal parasite cleanser. Mites are heat seeking, I am reasoning that they will find her and you did mention she is already scratching. You may have introduced them into your basement. Is there somewhere you confine her to, without isolating her and then it might be easier to monitor her? My cats vet did three scrapings before finding "something". They both went through three different rounds of Ivermectin to no avail. Many here are better at advice on pets, but there is something called Frontline. Anyone care to chime in here?

You mention baby spiders in your bed? Mites look spiders. Do you have a magnifying glass or microscope in which you can look at these with. Your local state entomology dept. can help you identify the bed offenders. Get some clear plastic packing tape and lift them off the sheets. Cover the back side with another piece of clear tape so they don't get away or accidently come off during transit. I put mine in a plastic baggy, stuck it in a mailing envelope and sent it off.

I can tell you my own experience with the foggers and pesticides. I experienced a swarm after using. It actually made mine much worse. I had a PCO as well, although it did seem to help, it did not solve my problems.

Many on here are finding relief at night by using Rita's Epsom salt recipe. Hopefully she will chime in here for you sometime today. This website has a place where you can go and retrieve info as well. also, a lot here have been using Cedarcide for their environment and Windex for their work environment and cars. There are some posters here, including myself, in which have found these little things to be in our heating systems of our cars. Underneath your hood towards your driving column, there is an intake air valve for your heater that draws outside ai,. you must treat that and cycle your heater while doing. vacum your car very regularly.

I also went through doctors at first and was under the assumption what I had was a scabies mite. The elimite, although it provided some relief also did not eliminate our problems here, because we were still picking these things up from the environment. If you suspect bird or rat mites, then the elimite is only a temporary fix, because your environment is still an issue. You must be diligent about your environment and whats on your body. You mentioned white bumps? I have the exact same problem. Scratches? Welts? My mites are living and breeding off of me. They went in my nose, ears, and eyes.

Over the course of today, this group will give you an immense amount of info. You have found one of the best groups of people out there.

Seeking guidance please

Hi everyone, glad to have found this group. I'm trying to figure outwhat is biting me, and what to do..like most people.My situation started off at work, getting occasionally bitten on theback in the computer lab. I didn't think too much of it until Ibrought it home and got dozens of bites on my ankles over a few nightsat home in my living room. I work in a federal building that has a problem with rats, bedbugs,and who knows what else. Management is mostly denying there is aproblem and has gone as far as to suspend without pay people whoreport the bed bugs. Taking a leave from work would be a last resort,and would be financially devastating. They are not very understanding. I assumed that it was bed bugs I'd brought home, although there as nosign of anything. Orkin came out for an inspection and said i hadplenty of spiders but definitely no bedbugs or fleas. I went to 3doctors who

told me they had "no idea" and guessed it was allergies. I began to notice the cat scratching after a few weeks. I cleanedvigorously and sprayed Ortho Home defense everywhere. The problemseemed confined to my living room, which I abandoned after about amonth of trouble. My cat went to the vet, was checked for fleas, dida skin scrape and was checked for mites and came up clean. I put herin the basement so she could stay healthy.At about the 6 week mark I started getting severely bitten at my deskat work and in the bed at night. I found baby spiders in the bed anddid another big treatment of foggers and Ortho. By this time I'dwashed my whole wardrobe several times and was keeping it in bags. Iwent to a new doctor who finally told me that it must be "some kind ofmite" -- I was so glad he believed me. He gave me Elimite, withinstructions to coat myself with it, and then clean the entire housewith

Lysol and a vacuum. By this point, the little stings and welts were appearing regularly --primarily face, neck, hands and buttocks, including a tiny row ofwhite dots in the inside of my finger and a big red bump at the end. My car seems to be the real hotbed for the bugs and I used 3 cans ofLysol in it and a vacuum, and Raid Fumigator twice. (I think theymight be in the heater system, too, because over the winter I couldnot use the heater because it spewed out some dust-like substance thatmade it impossible to breathe, even in sub-zero weather. But that'slong before my problems started.) After cleaning i did the Elimitecream for 10 hours and felt GREAT for 3 days. Then one day I camehome from work and my ankles were getting bit again. Now I'm coveredin more welts than ever, especially face and neck which is very painful.It's been a week since that treatment and the doctor has given me 4more

tubes for this weekend (I'm a big guy and the 2 tubes barelycovered me). I am feeling quite desperate, with only 3 hours of sleepat a stretch, and only 5-6 hours max any night. I have thrown outmost of my furniture and purchased an air mattress. I have used about20 Raid Fumigators in my little apartment, with little sign of help. Currently my car and bedroom are covered in Borax. Thank you for reading all this! A few questions...Does this sound more like scabies or bird mites? There are tons ofbirds/squirrels outside, and cracks in the ceiling and door (I'mtotally moving). I'm pretty sure I got it at work but it wasconcentrated in the living room for several weeks at least.Does 91% alcohol kill mites? I keep my head and face shaved. When I sweat, my forehead seems toget eaten alive by these things. Also, my nose and eyebrows areconstantly itcy at work. Are they coming from my scalp

maybe??I have a big basement that's hard to clean...any tips?My whole apartment is carpeted. I'm here for another month andfrankly, I don't like the idea of leaving the problem to new tenants.Will a shopvac help pull these out of carpet? Many thanks for listening and for any responses!Ian

[Guest guest]

Hello Ian, so sorry to hear that you have entered into the nightmare that everyone on this site is dealing with. I fought for 2 solid years with just about every inch of my body having red rashes, a sunburned look, or bites marks and all this came with an itched than couldn't be controlled. If you are lucky you will be able to catch one of the things biting you with tape. I spent 2 years trying to get something that looked any thing like a bug. I never saw anything move, everything I saw looked like a bundle of fibers.

The only thing that made a dent in whatever this is was Clorox, salt, Vaseline and iodine. To try mine and my husbands way out of this mess is painful. I don't know why but everything that gets them off the skin hurts. After we shower at night with dawn dish soap to remove all the oils from our skin. We then take straight Clorox that we have put in a squirt bottle. We put the Clorox all over us in the shower. Not only does it kill these things but we used it as a marker. Every where these things were on our bodies they would react to the Clorox by turning the skin red. Areas of the skin that did not have these things on in it did not turn red form the Clorox and the Clorox did not burn and felt just like water on the skin. Where these "bugs" were on the skin would turn red and burn like hell. You don't have to leave the Clorox on the skin for long. Put it on, wait for the burn and rinse it off. You can also soap up a wash cloth with the dawn and then squirt a large amount of Clorox on to the wash cloth and then start scrubbing. After rinsing, we then take one pint of water that has 2 cups of Epsom salt dissolved in it. Pour this slowly of your body from head to toe. Jump out of the shower and blow dry this salt on with a hair drier. If they are in your ears you can put a qtip that has been dipped in the 10% betadine solution down in to the ears and that seems to stop them. It also worked in the nose. The little bottle of 2% iodine works well on the bite marks. I would take a cotton ball with Clorox on it and go across my eyes. Then rinse well and then put Vaseline all over my eyes. One person on this site said that she rubbed her child down with Vaseline each night and it has stopped the little one from getting bites. The cleaning routine is exhausting. I vacuum everyday. I Clorox my plastic wrapped beds everyday. I sprayed a heavy salt mixture all through my house and would top that off with a Clorox spray. We threw every fabric item out of our house. Bought some new cheap cloths form Wal-Mart. We soak everything that touches our skin over night in plain water weighted down with empty Clorox bottles that have been filled with water to make sure the items soaking don't float up to the top making sure they are covered with water by at least 3 inches. Everything is soaked, clothing, shoes, wallets, bedding......everything that touches us. Then we wash the items in as much Clorox as it can stand.

Some on the site have had good luck with an oil called Cedar Cide. I use it also but I don't know how well it works because I have been free of these things since mid March. My car was full of these tings. The only thing that got them out was buying a tank of co2 from a welding supply store, placing the tank in my car and letting the entire tank empty. I let my car sit for 3 days but one day should be enough. Be sure and air the car out for several hours before driving and try to drive with the windows open on that first day. We had to do this several times

If you try doing what we have done the first several weeks it will feel like they get worst. I don't know if they are trying to run or dig down deeper but they seem to move more and itch more. Use the Vaseline to put where they are moving or itching and you can heat the Vaseline in a microwave and add some salt to it and rub that where you feel the damn things move, bite or itch.

There seems to be no silver bullet yet to deal with these things. We had 2 little dogs. We could not get better with the dogs here. Our dogs were like our children and the day they went from our home is a day we will never get over. All in all the only things that showed the greatest improvement was getting the house as empty as possible, soaking everything over night, cleaning and washing with Clorox and salt, removing all carpet and taking one tablespoon of plain table salt by mouth each day.

Living with this is very hard but it's a fight that can be won. It's hard living with skin that hurts all the time and it possibly is the worst thing a person can go through. Hang in there and don't give up. Everyone on this site is very helpful and many are trying a lot of different things so there is a wide range of treatments to try. Good luck and God be with you. Rita

Seeking guidance please

Hi everyone, glad to have found this group. I'm trying to figure outwhat is biting me, and what to do..like most people.My situation started off at work, getting occasionally bitten on theback in the computer lab. I didn't think too much of it until Ibrought it home and got dozens of bites on my ankles over a few nightsat home in my living room. I work in a federal building that has a problem with rats, bedbugs,and who knows what else. Management is mostly denying there is aproblem and has gone as far as to suspend without pay people whoreport the bed bugs. Taking a leave from work would be a last resort,and would be financially devastating. They are not very understanding. I assumed that it was bed bugs I'd brought home, although there as nosign of anything. Orkin came out for an inspection and said i hadplenty of spiders but definitely no bedbugs or fleas. I went to 3doctors who told me they had "no idea" and guessed it was allergies. I began to notice the cat scratching after a few weeks. I cleanedvigorously and sprayed Ortho Home defense everywhere. The problemseemed confined to my living room, which I abandoned after about amonth of trouble. My cat went to the vet, was checked for fleas, dida skin scrape and was checked for mites and came up clean. I put herin the basement so she could stay healthy.At about the 6 week mark I started getting severely bitten at my deskat work and in the bed at night. I found baby spiders in the bed anddid another big treatment of foggers and Ortho. By this time I'dwashed my whole wardrobe several times and was keeping it in bags. Iwent to a new doctor who finally told me that it must be "some kind ofmite" -- I was so glad he believed me. He gave me Elimite, withinstructions to coat myself with it, and then clean the entire housewith Lysol and a vacuum. By this point, the little stings and welts were appearing regularly --primarily face, neck, hands and buttocks, including a tiny row ofwhite dots in the inside of my finger and a big red bump at the end. My car seems to be the real hotbed for the bugs and I used 3 cans ofLysol in it and a vacuum, and Raid Fumigator twice. (I think theymight be in the heater system, too, because over the winter I couldnot use the heater because it spewed out some dust-like substance thatmade it impossible to breathe, even in sub-zero weather. But that'slong before my problems started.) After cleaning i did the Elimitecream for 10 hours and felt GREAT for 3 days. Then one day I camehome from work and my ankles were getting bit again. Now I'm coveredin more welts than ever, especially face and neck which is very painful.It's been a week since that treatment and the doctor has given me 4more tubes for this weekend (I'm a big guy and the 2 tubes barelycovered me). I am feeling quite desperate, with only 3 hours of sleepat a stretch, and only 5-6 hours max any night. I have thrown outmost of my furniture and purchased an air mattress. I have used about20 Raid Fumigators in my little apartment, with little sign of help. Currently my car and bedroom are covered in Borax. Thank you for reading all this! A few questions...Does this sound more like scabies or bird mites? There are tons ofbirds/squirrels outside, and cracks in the ceiling and door (I'mtotally moving). I'm pretty sure I got it at work but it wasconcentrated in the living room for several weeks at least.Does 91% alcohol kill mites? I keep my head and face shaved. When I sweat, my forehead seems toget eaten alive by these things. Also, my nose and eyebrows areconstantly itcy at work. Are they coming from my scalp maybe??I have a big basement that's hard to clean...any tips?My whole apartment is carpeted. I'm here for another month andfrankly, I don't like the idea of leaving the problem to new tenants.Will a shopvac help pull these out of carpet? Many thanks for listening and for any responses!Ian