Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite!

When Haley Batis and her roommate moved into their summer housing, they had no idea that someone else was already living there. Their room in the fraternity house just off USC's campus seemed perfectly fine. Maybe a little dirty, but nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn't until Batis went home for the weekend that she noticed a serious problem.

"All of a sudden I had all of these bites on my arms and I didn't know what they were from," Batis said. "So I researched it online and self-diagnosed it as bed bugs."

Since she was at home, Batis thought that her bed in Northern California was infested with bed bugs. To avoid being bitten, she slept on the couch for the rest of the week. But when she returned to her room in the fraternity, one of her many unwanted roommates exposed himself.

"And then I got back and that night I got back I was sitting at my desk," Batis said, "and I saw something out of the corner of my eye crawling on the bed and I like freaked out and I saw what it looked like and I looked it up and found out it was a bed bug."

Recently, bed bugs are making a comeback all across the United States as well as the rest of the world. They have infested high-end hotels, apartment complexes, hospitals and especially college residences. Bed bugs are spread when people unknowingly carry them in their luggage or clothes from an infested location to other spaces. According to Western Exterminator Entomologist Fred Rozo, this normally happens when people are traveling or visiting a home because in normal conditions people don't usually encounter them.

"Once you find that there are bed bugs in your home the best thing to do is call a professional," Rozo said. "Call one of us to come out and take a look at it. Don't do any changing of it yourself in preparation for us to come out and see you."

Rozo said once an exterminator is on the site, the first thing they look for is blood stains on the mattress or sheets, which comes from the bed bugs actually biting their victims. Victims can’t feel the bed bugs bite them because as they bite their food, they anesthetize the area of exposed skin they are going to bite.

“It’s almost like a true surgeon doing surgery,” Rozo said.

The second thing that exterminators look for is actual live or dead bed bugs or even their eggs. According to Rozo, bed bugs are not always just in the bed; they can be anywhere around the bed or even behind frames on walls.

“If there are 20 pair of bed bugs today, in six months you will have 6,000 bed bugs,” Rozo said. “So they reproduce very quickly. The thing is if females are able to eat blood every day, their reproduction is going to increase as well.”

Once it has been established that a space is infested with bed bugs, Rozo said it takes two treatments over the course of one to two weeks to completely get rid of them. These treatments normally include heat or chemical treatments. He also recommended special mattress or box spring covers that do not let bed bugs in or out of the mattress. These sheets kill the any remaining bed bugs that the exterminators may have missed, since an adult bed bugs can live up to a year without feeding.

After the bed bugs are eradicated, the victim may still experience various degrees of anxiety. Susan Jones, an associate professor at Ohio State University said the psychological effects from bed bugs range from fear of sleeping at night to depression.

“Beyond the anxiety, we see physical responses where the scratching can lead to secondary bacterial infections,” Jones said.
Like the case with many bed bug victims, Batis said she experienced some anxiety. She said she felt dirty and ashamed, even though the bugs were there before she arrived.

“It was a little bit of a relief that I knew it wasn’t me who like caused it or anything because I’m not a dirty person,” Batis said. “But I just felt really dirty I guess.”

Even though Batis said she now feels better, Jones said many people stay paranoid even long after having bed bugs. In her experience, victims continue to wake up at night thinking they are being bitten or believe they see bed bugs when it is another insect.

“In some case it gets to be a point of where people are experiencing delusionary parasitosis,” Jones said, “delusions that their body has been infested, that they are being infested.”

The best way to avoid bed bugs is looking for bed bugs when people go to hotels or buy used furniture. Rozo recommends looking around the mattress for any live bugs or looking for small blood stains since these can be signs of bed bugs.

“These things are very adaptable to traveling with us,” Rozo said. “They are very good hitchhikers.”

Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip

My boyfriend just visited me from England and we took a road trip to San Francisco. We can say with absolute certainty that we drove the entire route from Los Angeles to San Francisco on Pacific Coast Highway. It was possibly the most gorgeous drive I've ever done. From beaches to sunsets, every mile of the drive is picture perfect.

Not a standard beach day in Santa Monica

Families come to the Santa Monica Beach on Sundays to relax and enjoy a beach day together, but there's more to a typical day in the sun. The Veterans for Peace in Los Angeles sets up a temporary Iraq war memorial each Sunday from sunrise to sunset just north of the Santa Monica Pier. The memorial, known as Arlington West, is a place where visitors can honor and grieve the fallen and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each cross represents a soldier who gave his or her life for the safety of the United States and each week, more crosses are added for more fallen soldiers. As American fatalities increase, white crosses are replaced with red ones. Each red cross represents the lives of 10 fallen military personnel.

The memorial is not limited to just crosses laid out in the sand.

The Arlington West includes pillars of the names of all of the fatalities since day one of the war, with one pillar dedicated to the female fatalities in Iraq alone. The seven blue coffins with the American flag draped over it represents those military personnel who have fallen within the past week.

The Arlington West gives visitors a physical grasp on the affects of war, especially when families and close friends of the fallen write personal messages on a cross dedicated to their loved one. These messages include short snippets of their feelings, pictures, and precious belongings. There is even a book where visitors can write their personal messages to those who are fighting for our country. It is important for Americans to acknowledge that fellow citizens are putting their lives in the front line of danger for the safety of everyone sitting at home. Not to mention, that each soldier fighting is someone's son, daughter, husband, wife, best friend, mother or father.

This memorial gives meaning to just a regular Sunday at the beach. It reminds everyone at home what others are giving up just so we can enjoy the beautiful Santa Monica sunset.

Molly Martens admires her dad

Click here to hear what Molly has to say about her dad.

Click here to hear the whole interview.