If there is one post that I dreaded having to write more than the one where I shared I had lost my job, it is this one.

I have bed bugs.

To say it’s been preoccupying my life for the past two weeks is accurate, but to be more complete, I would have to say that bed bugs have been preoccupying my life for the past three years. Let me explain:

In August 2007, during my first summer in New Jersey, I started noticing these big, red, itchy bite marks on my legs, specifically between my ankle and my knee. Not any higher, not any lower. They weren’t in any discernable pattern, not in a line nor a circle. A few days later, when the first bites started to heal, I noticed a few more. Probably twenty in total. This was during my bout with extreme fatigue, and I asked my doctor if she knew what they could be. She didn’t know. And then they stopped.

Nearly two years later, in May 2009, they started again. I was in a different apartment, but my furniture was the same. I even shared what was going on, hoping that a reader might clue me in. I called an inspector to come and take a look. He couldn’t find any evidence on my bed, in the walls or on any of my furniture. Looking at my bites, he said they didn’t look like the traditional bite marks from a bed bug, and since it had been 18 months since my last bite, he wasn’t sure what they were. They lasted, again, for a couple of weeks. And then they stopped. I hoped the inspector was right.

A year later, they came back. Again. This time, instead of getting five or six or seven at a time, I got maybe two or three. But I was getting them more frequently. About once a week. Sometimes every other week. As of today, I haven’t been bitten since July 30. A friend of mine was dealing with bed bugs and I was telling her about my situation. She told me I should call an inspector. So I did. When he came over, he told me I had bed bugs. Not a serious infestation, he said. In fact, he couldn’t really tell if I had any physical signs of bed bugs. But he said that since I had been bitten, I should get treated.

So for the last week or so, my roommates and I have been going through the personal hell that many New Yorkers are facing. All our clothes, linens and anything that’s fabric in our apartment are in bags, separated into “washed” and “unwashed.” Our furniture is pushed to the center so the exterminator can take care of the little pests. Everything was sprayed last Wednesday, and will be sprayed two more time in the next two weeks. The exterminator tells me that my situation is very minimal, and I am relieved but also surprised because I would have thought after so much time the situation would have gotten worse. But it hasn’t, thankfully.

I have shared my story with several people with bed bugs, and everyone has shared how strange they think my story is. How random and irregular the bed bugs appear to be and also how the situation never deteriorated. My mother thinks they could be fleas. But because the situation has been so random, my plan is to carefully follow all the instructions and make sure they are truly gone.

This is certainly not something I ever expected to happen to me, but I can assure you that I am taking every precaution and treating everything as if I have a serious infestation. You don’t need to worry about hugging me at the next meet up.