Mites Story

[Jim7r]

I purchased my first house which was a real fixer upper in a nice but crowded neighborhood in Hawaii. It was built in 1954 along with the surrounding houses and all the houses were aging. I would later find out that several of the surrounding houses had neighbors that liked to feed pigeons and that several nearby homes have had problems with bird mites (usually after pigeons entered the attic). As soon as the pigeons were killed or removed from the house the problem ceased. My story was a little different.

Six months after I moved in, I felt something amiss when sitting on my fabric couch and occasionally I would feel a little bug bite or get what appeared to be a mosquito bite. I sealed all the window screens and put a mosquito trap in the living room. After a month it was no longer occasional bites it was every time I sat on the couch I felt something crawling on and biting me that I never saw. My girlfriend got home work (she was traveling) and sat on the couch. Immediately she said she felt something bite her. I had not told her about the issue and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me.

Our roommate was reading about bugs and decided to pour borax powder on the couch. I believe this ended up being a big mistake. From that point on I felt the crawling and biting sensations at different locations throughout the entire house. Usually it was on the area rugs, furniture or my bed. Our roommate moved out. Then after another month or so the crawling sensation was not isolated to any environmental location. One day I developed a rash across my chest that looked like hundreds of very small red bumps. From that point on the crawling sensation was present 24/7 on both my and my girlfriend’s bodies. The crawling sensation really seemed to be concentrated on our scalps and pubic regions in the hair. She left and her symptoms seemed to fade away over the course of the next few months.

Over the course of the next 18 months I threw away ALL of my upholstered furniture, area rugs, etc. and had the entire house treated multiple times with multiple pesticides, cedar oil fogging, diatomaceous earth, and went to see countless doctors. I spent thousands of dollars treating the house and was sleeping on a wood bed frame with a microfiber blanket. The doctors could not find anything wrong with my skin, hair, blood work and they all recommended I go see a psychiatrist who then also said there didn’t seem to be anything he could help me with other than treat me for the depression I had sunk into. I started on antidepressants and moved out of my house and got an apartment and all new bedding, linens and towels. The crawling sensation persisted. I took samples from dust balls and my bedding and sent them to an etymology lab for analysis.

All this finally changed when I made an appointment with my local allergist. He tested me for all the common allergies but did not find any severe allergies. He told me to go to the drugstore and get Hibiclens (chlorhexidine) soap and wash with it in the shower every day. He also told me to start taking Zyrtec (Cetirizine) one 10 mg pill per day and to come back in one month. Both of these were over the counter. After one month there was a lot of improvement. The crawling sensation wasn’t completely gone but had largely subsided and he told me to stop using the soap and keep taking the Cetirizine. The lab results came back and there were no organisms in the samples whatsoever. This was apparently not normal because there should at least be dust mites present in every house. I had apparently succeeded in killing every living thing inside the house.

After another month the sensation was completely gone. He told me to stop taking the pills. I stopped taking the pills and after a few days the crawling sensation came back full force and I got red itchy bumps resembling mosquito bites on my legs. I started on the pills again. I read on the internet that Cetirizine is actually quite strong and you need to wean off of it very slowly. The red itchy bumps were not bites but welts (an allergic reaction). So I weaned off over the course of about 6 months taking a pill every other day then half a pill every day, then half a pill every other day, etc. until I was finally off of them. I reentered the house and have not had any problems since.

I will likely never know exactly what caused this ordeal in the first place and as an engineer and scientist and someone who was literally driven insane by this problem that is a little frustrating but I’m just glad it’s over. I would guess that there was some microorganism that started multiplying in the couch and it was repeated exposure that caused a severe allergic reaction. I only received one positive identification from a lab during the whole ordeal and that was of an adult Collembola (springtail). It was crawling on my leg one day when I was eating at my table and I grabbed it with tape. The lab etymologist told me that the juveniles should not be smaller than could be seen with the naked eye and that they do not infest people. I just know what definitely worked for me and I hope to share this so that it might help someone in the future with a similar problem.

[CNDNGirl]

Thanks for sharing your story Jim. Any suggestions help! I’m glad you’re free of the pests now
– J

[Author]

Posts