Submitted by "Ms Itchy" on 08/27/2008

In January I noticed small itchy welts on my arms but thought it might be spider bites or a rash of some sort. In March I began seeing the occasional cockroach here and there, and notified our super who mentioned in passing that they'd have to spray the whole set of buildings so it would be pointless to try to get rid of them. The roaches eventually disappeared but my welts didn't, they got worse. I overheard the super telling another tenant he'd seen bedbugs, so my husband and I looked around the bed and area but couldn't spot anything. By April I had a horrible raised rash over much of my upper body. My Dr thought it was an allergy so we dismissed any notion of bug bites, besides my husband was not getting any hives at all. Finally in summer I noticed funny spots on the bed linens, and we discovered two massive nests of bedbugs in the box spring and many bloated insects in the seams of the mattress. Absolutely horrid. We threw out the bed, pillows and bedding, and sprayed everything down with bleach and insecticide (got a pretty good product from Trudel Hardware in the market, by the way). I told the super and he basically said the problem was widespread (it is pretty bad in Ottawa at the moment) and he didn't think anything we tried would work. Not very proactive. Apparently he did schedule an exterminator but we had already given notice by then, so he canceled the extermination!

We have since moved into a house and had to throw most of our furniture out before the move - the bugs migrated to our futon and armchair after the bed got junked and we don't want anything in the new house that might carry these pests.

Almost all our remaining possessions are in boxes in our garage so we can decontaminate everything before bringing it into the new house. Even after repeated spraying and isolation from food source - namely me - I still see bedbugs (admittedly dazed, sick or dead) in the bottom of the boxes from that apartment. I lost weight, sleep, and am still permanently anxious that I might be tracking these awful pests around with me. My skin starts crawling every time I go into the garage. I no longer have bites but have really damaged and irritated skin on parts of my body, residual from the allergic reaction to the insects, that will not go away. I have to follow this up with a skin specialist.

I feel the landlord at this building is doing what he can with what he has, which is not a lot. The rents are low and his superintendent tries really hard to keep things up in many ways, but this problem has a lot of landlords absolutely stumped.