What's eating my husband?
January 5, 2010 5:27 PM   Subscribe

My husband has bumps appearing on his arms after sleeping. What are these?

About a month ago, three bumps appeared on my husband's right arm, in a straight line. He assumed they were spider bites, and didn't think anything of it. A few days later, two more bumps appeared, on the outside of his elbow of the same arm. A few days after that, three MORE bumps appeared on that arm. He always noticed them in the morning after waking up.

I have not been bitten by anything in all this time, but even still, our first instinct was bedbugs. We tore the bed apart and inspected it very closely, but can't find any signs of bedbugs -- no bugs themselves, none of their gross shells or those weird stains they leave behind, nothing. A few days later, more bumps appeared on that same arm, so he finally went to the doctor on December 20th.

The doctor told him she wasn't sure what the bumps were, but was fairly sure they were not from bedbugs or scabies. Her reasoning was that the bumps didn't look right and weren't in the normal places you would find those bites. She said that her best guess was spider bites. That seems weird to me, because, again, nothing has bitten me, and would a spider really stalk him for weeks straight?

Anyway, she wrote him a prescription for Zyrtec, to relieve the itching, and sent him on his way. Two days later, we went on vacation for eight days. During the vacation, he did not get any new bumps.

We got back on December 30th. This morning, January 5th, he woke up with five new bumps, this time on his left arm (previously, they've all been on the right).

The bumps are small, about half the size of a mosquito bite, and pink in color. They itch extremely badly, and he has scratched a few enough to break the skin. No pus or fluid besides blood comes out when this happens. He only gets a few bumps at a time. They are not clustered like hives. Any ideas what they could be from? If I left any information out, please let me know, and I'll do my best to fill in the blanks.
posted by srrh to Health & Fitness (17 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Fleas?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 5:48 PM on January 5, 2010


I think you can have A bedbug or a small number of bedbugs and no evidence other than bites.
posted by theredpen at 5:54 PM on January 5, 2010


Chiggers? nearly invisible. itch like crazy.
posted by fogonlittlecatfeet at 5:55 PM on January 5, 2010


2nding fleas -they don't like me, but they like my husband and daughter. But it also sounds like spider bites, with the straight lines you mentioned. Can you use a white sheet for a bit and look for flea dirt?
posted by peagood at 6:04 PM on January 5, 2010


I once had a very similar problem that bears at least some similarity to your case. In my case, one of my coats had been infested with mold while storing it through the non-winter months and when I began wearing it again I started to get bumps like you described. Think about his clothing patterns and see if they match up with the symptoms (perhaps a coat or pyjamas?) and take a good look at the articles in question. This would be my best guess; a doctor should have been able to diagnose fleas or chiggers with a close inspection.
posted by LifeEngineer at 6:04 PM on January 5, 2010


I dunno, but the exact same thing just happened to me, a straight line of small bites, except on my thigh. No sign of bedbugs here either. One other difference is that this has only happened to me once, the night after I returned home from a long Christmas absence.

My guess was that a spider had taken up residence in the bed while I was gone, and that he decided to bite me a few times before finding a new home. I actually do have a proper spider bite on my other leg---it's much larger, though, and there's just one of them. Whatever these are, they're not chigger bites.

To add even more information: it seems like a couple of the bumps are centered around individual leg hairs. Your husband may have more arm hair than you do?

Other candidate explanations: I did a lot more walking around in the cold when I got back into town---perhaps that had something to do with it?

I wasn't wearing any moldy clothes.

So far it has not recurred.
posted by Chef Flamboyardee at 6:11 PM on January 5, 2010


I had itchy little red bumps for a while that appeared after sleeping. I never found anything (well, once I found what looked like the exoskeleton of a bed bug, and even that was only maybe.. do they even have exoskeletons? And it was longer and less wide than any pictures of bed bugs I saw), but I still assumed I had bed bugs. Once I made sure my bed wasn't touching walls or that my linens or anything weren't halfway on the floor my problem seemed to go away (so it must have been some type of bug).

Now my linens are always on the floor before I go to bed and so far the problem hasn't come back. I also used a bedbug/flea bomb I found at Home Depot. I also put all my clothes, linens, blankets, drapes, etc. in the dryer on high heat for twenty minutes while they were dry... Nothing shrank because it wasn't wet. My bites didn't necessarily look like bed bug bites I found on the internet either, but they were often in rows you describe. Three bites in a row might signify bed bugs as they sometimes get interrupted while feeding and move a little over. Also, it is common for bed bug bites to only affect one person.. Not everyone is sensitive to bed bug bites. I learned all this from bedbugger.com.
posted by tweedle at 6:31 PM on January 5, 2010


That sounds a lot like bedbugs to me. I've had them, and I had many different-looking bites, some small, some large, some itchy, some not. I was also bitten on my arms (as well as everywhere else), so I disagree with your doctor.

The line pattern is especially characteristic of bedbugs. If they are disturbed at all while feeding, they'll move a short distance and try again - this happens a lot.

Also, some people just don't react to bites which might be what is happening to you.

For your sake I really, really hope it's something else, but keep an eye out for bed bugs.
posted by ripley_ at 6:53 PM on January 5, 2010


What's odd about your doctor saying those aren't "in the right place" is that they're in precisely the right place. In fact, everything you describe indicates that they're bedbugs - bedbugs hardly ever can be seen at all in any form until they've been there for up to six months, anyhow, so you really wouldn't see any sign of them even if you really looked. The bugs themselves are completely invisible to the naked eye until they're about seven months old, those "gross shells" don't show up until around then either (and usually don't actually show up at all outside the upholstery they're living in) - and "those weird stains they leave behind" only appear after many, many years of bedbug infestation. They're truly almost impossible to find; exterminators themselves really don't have any way of seeing them. The only way to know they're there is the marks they leave.

The number-one telltale sign of bedbugs is:

Three bites in a row.

Seriously, it doesn't always happen that perfectly, but that's precisely what classic bedbug bites look like. See, unlike spiders or other insects, bedbugs come out to feed while a person's asleep, bite one spot, feed for a while, and then move on, almost invariably biting in sets of three in a straight line before falling off and crawling back into the mattress.

It would also make sense that you're not getting them; not everybody's sensitive to bedbugs. When we had them, my wife got them, but I did not - not a mark on me.

You have my condolences; bedbugs aren't fun. They can't cause any more damage than they're causing right now, really, and they don't carry disease or starvation or anything evil; but they're almost impossible to actually get rid of.
posted by koeselitz at 7:05 PM on January 5, 2010 [3 favorites]


They sound like bedbugs, especially the 3 in a row thing, just a minor infestation at the moment. Sorry. If it is minor, it would explain why there's not enough around for you to spot them just yet. Sor far as location, they don't seem to discriminate, I managed to get one of my face, feet,... well pretty much everywhere when I was on holiday (thank you, dive tour) And the insanely itchy part? Bang on. How the bumps appear change from person to person, I had a really violent reaction and had large raised bumps but other people react differently. I hate to tell you this as it's a really unfun experience to go through. Having said that, best to get it knocked off early, I would call an exterminator pronto. Best of luck.
posted by Jubey at 7:06 PM on January 5, 2010


I had this happen to me as well, a few years ago, but my line of bites was just below my waist. They itched like crazy, which left some faint scars actually, but the whole period of time I received bites lasted no more than a few days. We didn't do anything special in reaction to my bites beyond saying "huh" and moving on. But they stopped anyway. Do bedbugs go away as suddenly as they come, without doing anything to make it happen?
posted by DrGail at 7:41 PM on January 5, 2010


Response by poster: Damn it.... this is exactly what I DIDN'T want to hear.

Assuming it is bedbugs: I want to replace my bed anyway. It's old and crappy. If I trash that bed and all the linens that go with it, what precautions do I need to take to make sure the new bed does not also get infested? I read a ton of bedbug stuff when we were first trying to figure out what was biting him, but there's just such a deluge of information, it's hard to sort through it all. I know I can always count on MeFi to point me in the right direction!
posted by srrh at 8:03 PM on January 5, 2010


Best answer: srrh: “Assuming it is bedbugs: I want to replace my bed anyway. It's old and crappy. If I trash that bed and all the linens that go with it, what precautions do I need to take to make sure the new bed does not also get infested? I read a ton of bedbug stuff when we were first trying to figure out what was biting him, but there's just such a deluge of information, it's hard to sort through it all. I know I can always count on MeFi to point me in the right direction!”

Ahh... well, this is why I offered condolences in my last comment.

To approach this correctly, you need to know a few things about bedbugs:

  • They can withstand both extreme heat and extreme cold, at least by out standards. They'll burn, but even freezing them is difficult. Direct sunlight, however, appears to cause them distress.
  • Because of their life cycle, they can probably live anywhere between nine months and a year without feeding.
  • They are very, very small, nocturnal animals which naturally may hide in very small crevices and cracks in any relatively porous material.


  • The tough news on this that I'm giving you is: it's almost impossible to get rid of bedbugs. Because they may live in small, insulated cracks and crevices, the standard "kill 'em all" approach for particularly robust insects - fumigation, i.e. filling the air with chemicals poisonous to them - does them no harm whatsoever. An exterminator has to find them and isolate them to kill them all, and that's relatively difficult for an exterminator to do. And the trouble is, even if she can find them, the exterminator can only spray the area where they're hiding - usually not actually hitting the bugs themselves, since they're hidden. So two months later, when the poison is all gone, the bugs can come out of hibernation and live as though nothing ever happened.

    The standard procedure is this:

    (1) Remove and burn everything that isn't made of plastic or metal - every piece of furniture that's wood or upholstered - from the bedroom and adjoining rooms. Think - have either of you slept on, say, a couch in another room in the house? Has anyone else? If so, consider doing that room and rooms adjoining it, too. They don't usually like to, but bedbugs have been observed (particularly in later stages) to cling to people sometimes when they're awake, and to jump up to two feet.

    (2) Separate clothes and wash every piece of clothing in the house, making sure you don't mix piles. Remember, those piles are where they want to be: anything organic and porous.

    (3) What kind of floor do you have? Though I know it's unlikely, I'm hoping tile or linoleum. If you have carpet, consider having it replaced. If you have a wood floor, you should know that bedbugs love wood floors; they can crawl into the tiny crevices in the wood, and live there for a long time. Whatever type of floor you have, the next step is to have an exterminator come and spray the place down. He will probably leave a residue which will have to stay down for a few hours or days and then will disappear, or he'll come back to wipe it up. Either way, it's not particularly noxious, so it won't be a question of you getting cancer or something; it's just poison on the floor, so no bare feet for a while.

    (4) Replace furniture with new stuff.

    (Because I'm paranoid, and because I like to know that all that trouble was worth it, when this happened to us, I used the coffee-can method when bringing back furniture - a really ingenious trick a friend showed me. Put each leg of the bed, dresser, etc, in a coffee can, and then fill the coffee cans with water. If latent bugs try to march up the can into your bed, they'll end up in the water - and bugs can't swim, so they won't make it onto your bed. Most importantly, you'll know they're there. Of course, since the bugs can jump, you have to put the bed on risers of some sort if it's at all low to the ground; two and a half to three feet off the ground is probably enough.)

    This is actually a conservative way to go about it. State regulations on apartment buildings often demand that in bedbug outbreaks the entire building be cleared. However, I know it's not a particularly practical thing, dealing with bedbugs. It's sort of maddening, knowing that these little things you can barely see are there and you can't do anything about it. I have to say that it's a real blessing getting them in an apartment building, where you know you can move out; I can only imagine getting them in one's own house.

    But also keep in mind that I hit you with all this up-front to make sure you're prepared for the ordeal this could be, and to let you know the things you might be in for. It's sort of the paranoid approach, but it would be the complete approach. In your case, more cautiously, I would say something more like:

    (1) Wash everything within an inch of its life, and clean all clothing mercilessly.

    (2) Get rid of that old bed, mattress and all, and put it in a landfill if you can't find a way to burn it.

    (3) When you get your new bed, do the coffee-can trick I described above.

    - Those steps will at least let you start dealing with the bugs on a rational scale, so you'll know if and when there's more of a problem to deal with. If you're seeing any bugs at all in the water - they're easier to see there - then you'll know if the problem is worse than you'd hoped.

    One other thing to keep in mind throughout the whole process is that, while they are rather gruesome, bedbugs haven't been known to spread any diseases or ill health, beyond of course those awful bites. Potentially they could, but it's never been observed to occur yet, which is odd. It's surprisingly small consolation in the face of the very real psychological distress they cause (believe me, I know) but they probably will not make you sick in any way.

    Good luck. It can be tough, but hopefully you've caught it at an early stage.
    posted by koeselitz at 9:31 PM on January 5, 2010 [3 favorites]


    Response by poster: Thank you so much for such a helpful and well-informed comment, koeselitz! It definitely gives me a jumping off point. I've got some question.

    We are definitely, without a doubt, moving in March. Would it be best to keep the bed we have for now and get a new one when we move? It seems reasonable to me -- that way, I could know that the new furniture had never been in contact with this old crummy place.

    If we do wait until March to get the new stuff, what would be the best way to manage the bed bugs in the meantime? I have read to move the bed away from the wall and not let the linens drag on the floor, as well as putting something with water around the legs of the bed (as you suggested) or putting double-sided tape around the legs. Should I just stick with the linens I have now instead of going ahead and buying brand new ones, at least until we move and I get the new furniture?

    Is it even feasible to consider just managing them for the next two months, and starting over as freshly as possible when we move?
    posted by srrh at 9:45 PM on January 5, 2010


    Best answer: I'm really, really glad to hear that you're moving soon - that makes all of this much easier. In fact, from what I can tell, 99% of people who successfully get rid of bedbugs do so by moving. (Heh.)

    I actually think this is manageable - you'd just have to take lots of precautions, both now and in March before the move. The danger spots, the points you'll want to focus on, are wooden or upholstered or otherwise non-dismantleable; that is, if it's thicker than clothing or harder than a sheet, it's something they can hide in. Clothing or a sheet is easy to wash and dry-clean, and thin enough to be relatively sure; but even a pillow can be thick enough to insulate the things buried deep inside. Dry-cleaning is a better way to be sure that you've gotten them out of clothing or a sheet. Especially books and bookshelves are at risk.

    So, I would indeed keep the bed you have; you just want to act under the impression that it is infested, since it probably is. In fact, you want to keep the bugs in the bed; the water / double-sided tape trick will probably help on this count, at least a little. I would get every other piece of furniture I could out of that bedroom, and what I couldn't remove I'd get as far away from the bed as possible. Most of all, make sure clothing and linens never hit the floor. Bedbugs aren't animals that like to run around all that much, so your main goal will be to avoid creating little homes for them: anything organic and dark, anything wooden or clothe attracts them. Let them stay in the bed, I figure, and preferably in the mattress.

    In fact, while it clearly won't kill them, there's one thing that you can do to isolate bedbugs in the mattress: wrap it in plastic trash-bags. You can buy special rubber wrapper-things for mattresses, but only the really expensive ones cover the whole bed anyway, and that's what you need to do, so the best thing is generall just to get some duct tape and some strong black plastic trash bags and go to town.

    So here's what I'd do: (1) Clear the room as best you can of other furniture, as much as practically possible, and prepare to keep a clear area around the bed for the next few months. (2) Strip the bed, carefully removing the linens and placing them in a sealed bag to go to the dry-cleaners. (3) Wrap the mattress itself, front and back and every side, with thick plastic trash-bags, being careful to make sure these are as sealed as possible with duct tape. (4) When the linens come back from the dry-cleaners, keep using those until you move, washing them regularly of course to prevent any possible spread. (5) Come March, get rid of the bed; dry-clean all the clothing you can afford to, and wash the rest twice; don't let the new bed come anywhere near your new place; take an OCD shower, and you're probably set.

    We moved away from bedbugs, and our first safe night was glorious, let me tell you. Made me very happy to be rid of the things.

    This is just what I'd do, but I hope it helps. Again, good luck!
    posted by koeselitz at 10:16 PM on January 5, 2010


    If you move, there's a good chance the bed bugs will move with you!

    I successfully got rid of bed bugs almost a year ago by calling an exterminator. I had a couple of different companies come out, and I hired the only one that offered a one year guarantee. He also wouldn't do the work unless he had evidence of bed bugs, which is a good business practice, but made things difficult because we had no evidence -- only the bites (and only on me, the bites apparently have no effect on my boyfriend). It took a few days, but we FINALLY found a bed bug hanging on on the underside of our mattress, tucked in under the beading.

    We prepared for the treatment using the guidelines on this page. The company we used also had a good list of dos and don'ts relating to bed bugs.

    The Washington Post Magazine recently had a small piece on the life of a "pest control expert", and he mentioned the psychological toll of having bed bugs:

    The biggest casualty is people's emotional well-being -- even after you get rid of them. People will psychosomatically generate the appearance of itchy welts. And once they get on the Internet, it's all over. One woman had a small case. We got rid of them, but she kept calling us back. She stopped sleeping; she threw out all of her stuff. Finally, I took her hand and said: "Accept that they're gone. What you're having is anxiety." But that one didn't work out. We ended up doing a follow-up call to see how she was doing, and she was gone; she'd sold the place.
    posted by amarynth at 5:40 AM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]


    Response by poster: I just got the MetaFilter nudge to see if this question had been resolved, and it hasn't really. What we know for sure is that we do not and never did have bedbugs. Whatever was biting my husband stopped, and has not reappeared since the day I wrote this post (and now it is exactly one month later).

    We did go into full-on bedbug panic alert. We moved the bed away from the wall, put the bed's legs into tupperware containers full of water, wrapped doublesided tape around the bed legs, got rid of the bedskirt that touched the floor, washed all clothes and linens, moved everything out of the bedroom except the dresser, threw away and replaced all the pillows... We were planning on trying to follow koeselitz's advice of more-or-less trapping the bedbugs on the bed, and then buying a new one when we move in March.

    The thing was, after we did all that, he never got bitten again. Not a nibble. At this point, we became paranoid that maybe we had trapped bedbugs OFF of the bed, so we tried the bedbug detection method listed here. By the time we tried this, my husband had gone about 2 weeks without being bitten, so we knew that if we did have bedbugs, they MUST be hungry and would be attracted to the dish.

    In the end, after spending 12 hours out of the room with the dry ice "breathing" inside, there was nothing. And, again, he hasn't been bitten in a month now. (In fact, we just went on ANOTHER vacation, but unlike last time, when we got back, he got no new bites from sleeping in the bed.) We don't know what was causing the weird bumps in the first place, and I guess we'll never know, but after hours and hours of bedbug research, we are eternally grateful that bedbugs are NOT what we were dealing with.
    posted by srrh at 2:12 PM on February 5, 2010


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