By Katie Sweeney

At first I didn’t tell anyone. I was horrified and ashamed. But eventually, I started talking about my problem. I told everyone — friends, colleagues, cab drivers. People need to know. Because getting bedbugs is an experience that alters everything.

It all started one morning when I walked into the lobby of my 84-year-old Cathedral Hill apartment building and was met by a disturbing handwritten note pinned to the community bulletin board. It read, “If you’d like to sign the bedbug letter, please contact Melissa in #308.” I snapped a photo and sent it to my landlord. I was immediately uneasy. My stomach was in knots, my mind aflutter. Is there a bedbug infestation in my apartment building? Why is there a letter? It could just be a joke, right?

Five days later, when I went to make my bed, I discovered two dead bugs in the sheets. I gagged, then ran to the bathroom feeling queasy. My heart raced as panic set in. I returned to my bedroom, quickly ripped the sheets off the bed, and stuffed them into a black plastic Hefty bag. Then I called my mom crying hysterically. I emailed my landlord, but he didn’t believe that I had bedbugs and asked me to send photos of the critters I’d found. Frantic and dumbfounded, I ripped open the trash bag I had just sealed shut. Tears poured from my eyes and my hands shook as I searched through the folds of fabric. This was just the beginning of my stomach-churning, revolting, and tumultuous relationship with bedbugs. After seeing the photos, my landlord confirmed that, yes, they were in fact bedbugs.

I received a notice from Western Exterminator informing tenants how to prepare for extermination, but it didn’t provide much information about bedbugs, so I turned to Google. Bedbugs vary in size depending on their age and how recent their last feed was, but fully grown ones are about a third of an inch long, about the same size as an apple seed. Bedbugs feed by inserting a numbing agent into the skin, so the victim doesn’t feel anything as it gorges on his blood. Bugs that are fat, flat, and circular have recently fed, but they can live up to two years without feeding. They hide in the crevices of fabric, where they lay eggs. Female bedbugs have quite the impressive reproductive cycle. They can lay up to eight eggs per day until the end of their nine-monthlong lifespan.

There are warning signs of an infestation. And looking back, they were all right there. Bedbug feces leave small black dots on sheets. I’m horrible at removing my makeup at night, so I thought the stains were from my mascara. Bedbugs that are sloppy eaters leave bloodstains on the sheets. I assumed the small bloodstains were from nicking myself while shaving my legs. What about the bites? Well, I thought I was having an allergic reaction to something I had eaten. Little did I know the bumps were from bedbugs.

When I was taking the dust ruffle off my bed, I found the nest. There were countless rusty brown bugs, in all different sizes, crowded together and piled on top of one another, all clinging to the fabric. Hundreds of creamy white and dark black spots (eggs and feces) were intermixed with discarded molted skins. I tried to scream, but a guttural primal gasp was all I could manage before bursting into a distraught sob. This repulsive memory still haunts me.

I was told the extermination process would be a series of three chemical treatments spaced over a few weeks to ensure that any newly hatched eggs were killed. My first treatment was scheduled three days after I discovered the outbreak. To prepare for it, I had to wash every piece of fabric at high heat, and then seal the items in black trash bags. I also had to bag any other belongings, such as shoes and handbags, and move all of my furniture to the middle of the room. I spent $100 and an entire day at the laundromat.

I was lucky I could retreat to my parents’ house in Petaluma while the treatments took place. With the plan to commute into the city and spend an occasional night on a friend’s couch, I packed a bag of freshly washed clothes, enough to last a maximum of three weeks. I had no idea that my status as a bedbug refugee would last more than two months.

After the second treatment, a trained dog was brought to my apartment to sniff for stragglers. Unfortunately, my landlord lied about when the exterminators had come, and what I thought was the final treatment was actually only the first. A month passed, my life still in Hefty bags. Even after three treatments, the bugs kept appearing. The exterminator requested that I dispose of my box spring, mattress, couch, and wallpaper, and even after I did, the dog still found more bugs. Three weeks later, when the dog came again, we actually saw a bedbug crawling on the crown molding. At this point, I laughed.

While my friends talked about their jobs, upcoming weddings, and travel plans, the only thing I could talk about was bedbugs. When someone I hadn’t seen in a while greeted me with a warm, “What’s new?” I replied, “I have bedbugs.” I developed horrible insomnia and feared that every little itch was a bedbug making its attack. I had to inspect every item that was small and brown — be it a piece of fuzz, a hole in the wall, or a sesame seed. I couldn’t focus at work. Having bedbugs made me feel unattractive and undesirable, so I stopped dating. I fantasized about infesting my landlord’s house with bedbugs, so he would finally realize the extent of my pain.

Because I hadn’t been living in my apartment for quite some time, I contacted the rent board. I read and re-read the regulations involving landlord duties in the case of a bedbug outbreak, and realized my landlord wasn’t treating the problem correctly. I met with the tenants’ rights activists. I talked to a Department of Public Health official. I called Melissa in #308 and signed the bedbug letter.

I found out that the initial outbreak occurred three months earlier in a unit directly across from mine. According to the city’s regulations, units adjacent to an infested one are required to be treated. If not, the bugs just move from apartment to apartment until the entire floor is infested. I asked for a reduction in rent for the time I was not living in my studio, but my landlord expected me to pay full price for the infested apartment I couldn’t sleep in, with most of my belongings in trash bags. There were 40 full bags in my studio that I could barely walk around.

In the end, it took seven treatments to end the nightmare. I didn’t live in my apartment for a total of 63 days. I would have moved, but with the city’s inflated rental rates, I simply couldn’t afford it. Since my landlord refused to reduce the rate of my rent — and I had plenty of evidence of his negligence — I petitioned the rent board for a decrease in services and won back the money.

It’s been five months since the nightmare ended, but there’s no going back to life before bedbugs. I’m still paranoid. My bed — sans dust ruffle — floats in the middle of the studio, a foot away from the walls, with 10 sticky traps underneath to detect any signs of the critters’ return. I check the traps regularly and pick every piece of brown lint off my sheets, inspecting it to make sure it’s not a bedbug. I don’t know when I’ll stop carefully examining a bed before I crawl into it — maybe never. I can’t look at a bump on my skin without worrying that the bugs have returned. And when I see a discarded mattress on the sidewalk, I’m certain it was thrown out because it was infested with bedbugs, so I cross the street to get as far away from it as possible.

I’ve become a walking encyclopedia of bedbug knowledge and rent board regulations. But in addition to this regrettably handy information, I’ve come away from this horrific experience with something more important. I’ve discovered my own resilience. I was feasted on by bugs, ousted from my home for more than two months, and emotionally, financially, and physically exhausted. But in the end, the bugs were defeated and not me.