I had to treat a poor 73 year old woman in the hospital a few days ago with all of the above critters.
I wore all of the protective garments etc and observed all precautions & have showered a zillion times and scrubbed off half of my skin.
SO WHY AM I STILL ITCHING !!!!!!

I have learned all I ever want to know about bedbugs as I went through that nightmare.

Like you, Ruthie works in a hospital that frequently admits patients with head lice and bedbugs in their clothing.

She will stay in "creepy-crawly defcon 1" for days.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

I went fishing and the edge of the water was sandy. When it got dark the fleas bit me. I went home took a shower and washed my clothes. I went looking at a trailer a modular home for my camp. Getting bit again. Wash everything again.
I fear traveling because of bed bugs.

Scabies maybe?

My Dad got them and they misdiagnosed it as Grover's disease. He got real bad to the point of septicemia. I'm pretty sure it was his final straw.

Guess who got it next? My skin doctor knew what they were as soon as he saw it.

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Dum vivo cano

Put ammonia in your wash it will kill them.
John

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

I know I`m clean its just ,
Psychosomatic!
At least that is what I keep telling myself.
I sure hope I don't have to go back to see her again!

Chigger bites are the worst bug bites I've experienced but they aren't common around here.
Steve W

Sleep tight don't let the bedbugs bite.

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Back to back World War Champs.

This is a reference to when beds were made of rope. The bed ropes had to be tightened each night before you went t to bed. You wanted to sleep in a bed with tight ropes, hence "sleep tight." And back when rope beds were in vogue, insects were rampant so one would expect to get bitten by bed bugs.

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Bill

I know the feeling, Cpo1944. I work on drilling rigs, mostly offshore and have been out there twice when someone came out with the crabs. Even though they weren't in my room on the rig, I felt all itchy the whole hitch out there after the guy discovered he had crabs. The first time wasn't too bad, as nobody else caught them. But the second time, the guy shared them with the other 3 fellows in his room and they had to call the exterminator to the rig. They sprayed down all the rooms, sprayed down all the linen and blankets on the rig and then washed them and everyone had to take a shower with crab shampoo. And everyone, and I mean everyone out there went around for the rest of the hitch scratching themselves even though the problem had been taken care of.

My last maintenance job was in mentally ill/low income housing, The men on my team had a signal to let you know of the presence of bed bugs. They would raise their hand to mid chest and slowly scratch about a half inch out from the body.

The company's annual extermination budget went from $75,000 to $400,000 in the last two years I worked there. There was so much bedbug spraying going on, that roaches were almost unheard of. (didn't seem to affect the spider populations at all!)

As a step toward keeping from spreading the pests to our homes, we would take abandoned electric dryers, and hook them up in storage rooms we had all over town. Slip in, strip, tumble dry on high for 15 minutes, and you were ready to go. When I left we had 20 or so dryers, that I knew of, there were most likely 10 to 15 more.

Ivan

Same thing happens to me if I find a "tick" on me.......I feel things crawling on me for the next day or two.

Don

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Laus Deo! <><

I wonder how much extra money that Patient cost the hospital to decontaminate and clean up. She came in to the ER with a broken back, then up to an in-patient room, then to pre-op, surgery, post-op, another in-patient room. Then there were her family members/poor care givers contaminating everything they came into contact with when they came to visit her.
It goes on and on What a Mess!!!
And I`m still scratching!

Had a tick on my arm once running in circles looking for a spot to bite got him just in time. Gave him the flush(toilet). Now after flushing so many ticks I have visions of my septic tank spewing out big ticks. Lmao

Not too bad with tics this year the wild turkeys and there brood are here twice a day eating corn and bird seed plus ticks too.

This brought back so many memories of my first few years in law enforcement. No bed bugs, but it was common for a certain class of people to be infested with fleas and lice. There were a couple of people with things crawling on them that weren't fleas, lice, or bedbugs, but I'll be damned if I knew what they were. There was a real problem keeping the county jail from getting infested. The booking procedure involved disinfecting these people and their clothes. Now you have me itching just thinking about it. I'm going to nightmares tonight just remembering about the lice crawling all over these people and their clothes. Disgusting.

But, I thought everyone liked pets?

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Live From Music City USA

No problem with pets we take care of them no fleas or ticks here.
No lice or bed bugs too. We do gun maintence so why not do pet maintence too.

Many years ago I had a patient, a cute little stripper who was just as country as they make them, basically a nice kid who was trying very hard to stay off of drugs.

She was faithful about keeping her appointments; but one week she called in and told our receptionist she couldn't come in because she was having cramps. Maggie, the receptionist, was a tough little Irish lady who had raised eight kids, and she made no secret of her opinion that cramps were not a sufficient excuse.

Later, however, the girl called and said a doctor had given her some medicine and she would be in after all.

She arrived and sat down in my office, chatting away about her week--and I suddenly realized she hadn't said she had cramps, she had said she had crabs.

Instantly I began to itch. It was all I could do to get through the hour without scratching vigorously and inappropriately.

When she left, housekeeping staff sprayed my office, but I itched the rest of the day. The power of suggestion...

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Oh well, what the hell.

Most of us only have the problem of pets bringing in fleas. Historically most winters here have been cold enough to kill at least the adult fleas outside. Unfortunately we did not get a hard freeze last winter. Despite regular treatment with Frontline flea drops and flea baths the dog's fleas got out of control to the point where I took her to the vet. The vet said there is a big problem with fleas that are immune to Frontline. They obviously are also immune to Hartz shampoo. This is the old flaw with vaccinations and the like. The tiny number of bugs that are immune to the insecticide reproduce to refill the available habitat and become the predominant bug. The vet prescribed chew-able monthly tablets that are even more expensive than Frontline drops. Of course I had to spray the carpets.

Before flea drops displaced flea collars on the market I never had a good old flea collar fail to do the job. Now I can not find one.

I had problems with a different pest way back when I was in college and spent one Spring and part of Summer installing boat piers on lakes in the MidWest. The problem was leeches which you couldn't avoid since we spent a lot of time mucking around in the mud near shore. Sometimes you'd come out with a half dozen on you. We used to remove them by holding a just extinguished match to their back sides as this would cause them to back out. A disgusting but necessary thing that went with the job.
Jim

I had a horrific flea problem with my dog and my carpets. I spent months treating her and the carpets with every kind of chemical I could find to no avail.

I finally tried using Diatomaceous Earth, food grade with is 100 percent pure. It is a very fine white powder that is actually made of silica or glass. It has sharp edges that scratches the skeleton of fleas and then it dries them out as it is highly water absorbent.

I bought a 50 pound bag which was way, way too much as it goes a long way. I spread it out and used a broom to brush it in. Then vacuumed it up the next day. It takes several treatments as this only kills the adult flea, and not the eggs or one of their early stages of development. So I treated it once a week for a month. I also dusted the dog with it and at the end of a month there were no fleas on the dog or in the carpets. This stuff worked, but it did not work right away.

Also it is a bit messy as it fogs up when brushed into the carpet so I wear a dust mask when I brush it in.

If nothing else works for you this will if you are persistent with it. You will not need 50 pounds. LOL

It is interesting stuff and non-toxic, as some farmers feed it to their animals as a wormer. It is also used in long term storage of grains to kill off insects that have an exoskeleton. But do get the food grade which is 100 percent pure.

I don't know why I kept reading this thread, now I'm off to bed itching like crazy. The mind is a powerful thing. I keeping telling myself there is no bugs, but I'm still itching......

What about the two legged variety who live in Washington, D.C.? They can make your skin crawl too.

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Scoundrel & Ne'er-Do-Well

There's a new super lice that's on yahoo right now working across our country. But we have the Zika virus too. I picked up a pine rinse for the shower. Time to go bald?

Mutant '''Super Lice''' Outbreak Has Now Spread to Nearly Every State

I had a tick that got onto my right thigh once back about 1994-sometime while I was mowing my lawn. I never knew the little pest was there till I felt itchy. I think it got on me because of the mower blowing things around. Ive heard the best way to get rid of a tick, is stab it with a needle. I tried that but, it dug in even more. Next I simply pried it out with pliars. I know its head could have stayed in but, I was lucky it came out with the body. I then proceded to put it into a saucer plate, and burned the little _________ till nothing but a small burnt-out husk.

I heard from a friend of mine-now long-since a retired Sergeant-major-who spent his whole career as an Infantry sergeant, that you can get crabs merely lying in the grass. True or not? I never lie down in the grass.

Yeah some of those European girls have quite a lot of "territory" for those crabs down stairs if you know what I mean!!

Back when the farmers burned there fields the bugs/ticks were killed.

I don't want to scare anyone about the super lice I just want to raise an awareness so we check for them.

As a little kid I spent time in logging camps with my grandmother while she cooked. The trick back then to keep bedbugs down or at least from "travelling" was to put a tuna can under each leg of the bunk, then add a splash of kerosene into each can.
I used to have to get tick checked every night before bed. I would stand in front of grandma in the kitchen while she would do a close visual check over my close cropped head and ears, down to my belt line. Whenever she found a tick she would use her cigarette to back it out then toss it on the cook stove where we watched them pop. She warned me to never try to pull one out and showed me how a little oil will suffocate them and make them back out. We had a Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever scare back in the 50's that required me to get a shot, other than that it was common to get checked nightly or do a personal check. Had one bother me last year as it was getting set to bury in for a meal in my beard covered cheek, got it and squashed it with great satisfaction between my thumbnail and finger the way grandpa taught me.
My two granddaughters have recently been infested with lice while attending public school. I asked someone I know in the medical field about how to try to prevent it. She said that one of the things lice really like is clean hair, they can get a real solid grip in nice fluffy clean hair, sort of a left handed compliment to my daughters extra clean fluffy hair. Other than that she said there was no way to truly prevent it other than avoiding contact with those infected, kids being kids that is nearly impossible, they are like puppies, all over each other.
Ticks and skeeters is about all we have up here in the way of blood sucking common critters that anybody out in the woods or afield needs to be concerned with...ain't no big thing.

Those sharp edges can do hideous damage to your lungs, or those of pets, if inhaled.

My lungs are already damn near destroyed, so I wouldn't use it without both a mask and a wet cloth over my nose and mouth. If then.

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Oh well, what the hell.

THIS! DO NOT INHALE!

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Dum vivo cano

That depends on who you lie in the grass with!
Did he say if his wife had believed that story?
Steve W

Lying, Lie, Lay, Lies, Lays.

Too much info.

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Dum vivo cano

He never married, but I imagiine had quite a few adventures as a single person. Stationed multiple time in Korea and Germany. He still vividly remembered a place of fun, located in Konstanz. He asked me to see if it were still there giving me the addy. He wanted to revisit the place when going to Germany to visit friends the following year. I was traveling with my friend Susanne-and she drove me to the addy, yup--they were still in business. Susanne btw, lived in nearby Dingelsdorf--so knew what the place was etc. And NO I never entered th establishment nor checked its wares. so DONT ask for any details.

I was a nanny and there was a big lice breakout at the children's school. Imagine the colossal upset when it happens in a wealthy community with snobbish tendencies. I can say that because I grew up there (it was different then) and the town was just in an article on snobbiest places. Turns out the oldest child had it and she gave it to her mom and sister. I think it was caught in time so I took precautions (treated my hair with Cephacil skin cleanser per children's Dr). The kids washed their hair every day and were swimmers. Turns out lice prefer clean hair. There was a special hair salon in town called Cutie Bug that only dealt with kids who had lice so it was a common problem.

I have picked up ticks hiking several times but luckily only got bit once. I didn't think to check for ticks because it happened in the winter. Now that I know what it feels like, I will never ignore that feeling again! I went to my mom for help and she tried all the usual tricks to no avail so I had to have a Dr pull it out. The head got stuck in me so he had to cut it out.

Our cat does not come inside without getting brushed first. This year has been a really long tick season. One female tick can lay up to 18,000 eggs at once!

Boy Scout leader was a rangy ol' Marine officer with some hard bark who carried a bottle of clear nail polish in his kit. Paint it on the tick, let dry and peel off. If it was in a soft spot the kid did it themselves.

Ya forgot one:

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Yeah, we love pets, not PESTS!!!!!!!!!!

AFAIK, they ARE common in areas around the Twin Cities.

Could this be an allergic reaction? Probably not just in your head...