She’s Issuing A Warning To Check For Bedbugs When You’re On Vacation After She Got Bitten By Them On A Bachelorette Trip
As someone who lives in a big city, I’ve become extra wary of bedbugs.
Bedbugs can wreak havoc on a home, and getting rid of them takes time, money and leads to mental exhaustion. Not to mention bedbug bites can be very painful and irritating for some people.
One young woman has issued a warning on TikTok to thoroughly check for bedbugs when sleeping in a new space on vacation, even in places other than a mattress.
Sarah Luepker, a ceramist based in Chicago, recently stayed in a rental home with friends in Colorado for a bachelorette event. The rental home was quite nice and very clean, but Sarah still made sure to check for bedbugs on every corner of the mattress she’d be sleeping on.
“I lift up the fitted sheet, I check every corner, and there is nothing, so I sleep in the bed,” says Sarah in her TikTok video.
“The next morning, when I wake up with one or two bug bites on my arms, I assume their mosquitos from sitting out on the patio the day before.”
As the day went on, two or three more bug bites appeared on Sarah’s skin. She still assumed she was getting bitten by mosquitos throughout the day and slept in the same bed one last time. The following morning, she noticed that more bug bites continued to appear on her skin. They showed up in clumps all over her body, and she’d find a new bite every five minutes.
Sarah’s friends were alarmed by the bites and decided to go back into the rental home before checking out to inspect for bedbugs one last time. Sarah waited outside and could hear her friends communicating through the door.
Then, she suddenly heard one of her friends screaming in horror. Every other bed in the rental home had wooden headboards, but the bed Sarah slept in had a cloth headboard. As it turned out, that’s where bedbugs were hiding. Her friend looked very closely and found them clumped around the indented buttons on the headboard.
leszekglasner – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Later, Sarah found out that bedbug bites can actually take up to fourteen days to appear on someone’s skin, which is why she figured the bites that were showing up on her skin during the day were from mosquitos.
Sarah and her friends had to put all their belongings in plastic bags before she stripped down in her friend’s garage and took several hot showers in her house.
Everyone washed and dried their clothes on the highest heat settings before flying home.
Thankfully, none of Sarah’s other friends took bedbugs home with them.
Unfortunately, the bedbug torture didn’t stop there for Sarah. Her bites became extremely large and swollen about five to six days later, and she was painfully itchy.
She had gnarly headaches and even experienced labored breathing. Benadryl helped with her breathing, but she was still in extreme discomfort.
“All I could do for, like, two days was pop Benadryl after Benadryl and just sleep through the pain,” says Sarah, who still had visible red bumps on her skin when she made her video.
“[The] only thing that actually helped with the itching was taking really, really hot cloths and putting them over the bites and then using ice packs for the swelling.”
At the end of the day, Sarah and her friends are thankful that no one else was bit by the bedbugs, and their rental home stay was fully refunded.
“It’s kind of like I won everybody a free…trip,” jokes Sarah at the end of her video.
“And all it cost was a little bit of anaphylaxis!”
So the next time you’re on vacation and staying in a hotel or rental home, be sure to check not only your mattress but any bed headboards and additional furniture in the space for bedbugs, which are visible to the human eye and are the size of an apple seed when fully grown.
Have you ever had to deal with bedbugs?
@saramics.pottery Replying to @TessaG.G. 0/10 would not reccomend hopefully this information saves someone from this misery #bedbugs #fyp #storytime #travel #traveltiktok
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