... There was a family of three happily living in a lovely home, minding their own business, getting on with their neighbours and leading a very unremarkable, but settled life. Then, during the Spring of 2012, a couple of House Martins came and made a nest under the eaves of their home. The family were thrilled, and enjoyed watching the parent birds building the nest, sitting on their eggs, and then going off for food for their young. They even enjoyed the never ending chattering of the young birds, calling out for food. Suddenly, in the second week in August 2012, it went quiet. The young birds had fledged and flown away, and the parent House Martins went too. The only souvenirs of the relatively short tenancy of the birds was the empty nest, and lots of bird poo down the outside wall of the house.
At least, we thought those were the only souvenirs. How wrong we were. Around a week later, I woke up one morning with itchy red patches on one shoulder. I'd heard a mosquito buzzing round the room the previous evening, so put it down to that. I found the mozzie, repatriated it outside, and thought that was the end of that. I was wrong. I kept waking up with itchy red patches; they looked like bites, but I couldn't think what had bitten me. We hadn't been away anywhere to bring back something like bed bugs, but I made it my mission to look anyway. I pulled all the furniture away from the walls in my bedroom and examined the skirting boards, the carpets, the walls. I took off all the bedding on the (divan) bed, and closely inspected the mattress seams for signs of blood spots or droppings of some kind. I found absolutely nothing.
I went to the doctor's surgery, and saw the practice nurse. By this time I was regularly waking with a trail of itchy redness across my torso and back. She said it looked like an allergic reaction of some kind and asked if I'd used a new washing powder or some new toiletries. My answer was no, and no. She prescribed some hydrocortisone cream, which I was to put on the rash in the hope it would soothe it and help it disappear. That didn't work - a week later the 'rash' was even worse, and I was sure it was as a result of some kind of bite. I wasn't sleeping well, the itching and pricking of my skin was much worse at night than in the daytime. My daughter noticed some itchy spots on her back one evening - which made me more certain that it wasn't 'just' an allergic reaction on my part.
My son went for a sleepover at a friend's house, so I decided to spend the night in his room instead of my own. I didn't sleep well at all, and on getting up had an even bigger rash on me than I'd had before. It was bizarre. I also began to experience sensations on my skin. Sensations like one gets in warm, muggy weather, when thunder bugs land on your skin and crawl on it. Yet when I looked at my skin, I couldn't actually see anything on it. We noticed then that my son had a few red dots on his skin, but he plainly wasn't having the same kind of reaction that I was getting. My daughter's reaction was somewhere between the two - she reacted but the marks on her skin were smaller than mine.
I decided to call in a Pest Control company. The guy that came round did all the things I'd done - examined the skirting boards, ceilings, carpets. He pulled all the bedding off the bed and shone his bright torch at all the stitching and seams. He couldn't find anything. Then we went into my son's bedroom, and there on the window sill was a tiny creature, slowly moving across the paintwork. He picked it up, examined it under a loupe and said "this looks like a bird mite. Have you had birds getting into the loft somehow?" I said no, but that we had had a family of House Martins outside - and my son's room was the closest to that nest. He grabbed the ladder from his van and put it against the side of the house, climbing up to the nest. When he came down he said he was sure that nest was the cause of our problem. He suspected it was teeming with bird mites. He advised taking away the nest, and treating the first floor of the property with a fogger and chemical insecticide.
At least now I knew what we were fighting, and began some intensive online research. Some of what I read totally freaked me out - I read about people fighting these things for years on end with no respite, and I'd experienced enough to know that that wasn't something I wanted to think about, let alone live through. I read about the huge changes people had had to make to their lives to minimise the number of bites they were getting. I read much, much less about people who had successfully treated a bird mite infestation and come out the other side. It was very depressing indeed. Friends reminded me that the internet is not a 'balanced' place. People generally post a lot more complaints and negativities than they do praises and positivity. Although I wanted knowledge, I had to stop myself reading one particular site because whenever I looked at it, I descended into hopelessness and panic.
Nevertheless, I began to bag up all textiles in the house. Clothes were washed at hot temperatures, ironed and then stored in plastic bags. Friends and family took in washing for me and washed it according to my instructions. I began to have a major sort out. I did numerous trips to the local tip, with black bags of 'stuff' we no longer used or needed. I started showering at least twice a day, and using a stiff brush on my skin. I was using the vacuum cleaner every day, and sprinkled DE powder all around the place, especially near the many large settlement cracks we had.
Here in the UK, House Martins are a protected species. It is illegal to remove a Martin's nest until 1st September in any given year. 'Our' nest came down on 5th September, and the first floor was sprayed the same day. When the PCO retrieved the nest from the outside of the house, he found it was full of thousands of mites. They crawled all over him as he brought down the nest and put it in not one, but two heavy plastic sacks for disposal. He went back up the ladder and treated the wall where the nest had been ... and then he liberally sprayed himself. He then treated the first floor of the building as he had advised. We - and our cat - stayed with family overnight, then went back the next day. I was hopeful that this would be a turning point, but it wasn't. Things did not improve; if anything, they got worse.
I decided I should take our cat to the vet to make sure she wasn't carrying anything which could be responsible for our bites, or was herself being bitten. She certainly wasn't scratching or appearing troubled in any way. The vet examined her carefully and said she had nothing on her and that her skin was fine. He said the fact that I treated her every four weeks with an anti-flea preparation was almost certainly protecting her. He also said in his experience bird mites were extremely difficult to get rid of, and that he wasn't joking when he advised me to think about moving.
The PCO had told me that if the bites continued after a week, to get the company back out again as a follow up treatment might be needed. After 7 days I was still largely sleepless, and still getting numerous bites. The company came out again. A different PCO visited this time. He said the first guy hadn't done 'enough', and proceeded to spray Vikane over the top two floors of the house (it was a three storey house). He also sprayed walls and stairways. He advised us to stay away from the property for up to 48 hours as Vikane is particularly bad for cats. We had been invited to a party that weekend, so I decided we would just go and enjoy the party. Whilst away for that 48 hours, I didn't get any bites, and it was a blessed relief to sleep. That also showed me the problem (at least at this stage) was the house, and not me personally.
We had left the house on Friday teatime, and came back on Sunday evening. Within two hours I had bites around my torso, where the waistband of my jeans sat. I'd noticed that whatever these mites were, they really liked to bite where my clothes were tight against my skin - around the waistline of clothes, my bra line, or where the elastic in my socks sat against my ankle. I could also feel them in my hair. The second treatment had as little positive impact as the first had had ... the bites continued to be a daily and nightly occurrence. Between morning and teatime, it was mostly crawling sensations that bothered me. But once we reached around 5pm, it was a different matter. The bites started. It was like jarring pin pricks, some very painful, and then a sharp stinging sensation after I'd been bitten. After that the burning itch began and a large red welt would appear on my skin. The hours between 11pm and 5am were the worst: I could feel them on my skin, on my scalp, and even in my ears. One night I got up and put cotton wool in my ears to try to stop the revolting sensation in my ears; but all that happened was that I could then hear them crawling through the cotton wool, as well as feel them moving. It was a living hell.
By this time my health wasn't great - apart from the obvious concern for my kids, I was exhausted from lack of sleep and constant cleaning/washing/ironing. I had been back to my GP, who advised me to get out of the house for the sake of my own well-being and that of my children - she even wrote to the local Council asking if they would help me (needless to say, they didn't). If I followed her advice, where would we go? And what about all our belongings? She (the doctor) prescribed anti-histamines as, she said, it was clear I was having quite a severe allergic reaction to the mites and their bites. Unfortunately I also had quite a bad reaction to some of the anti-histamines she prescribed, so I stopped taking them. I had started losing a lot of weight, and was worried about the cost of the electricity and water bills given the amount of washing at high temperature I was doing.
It was around this time that I decided to stop sleeping on my bed. I bought an air bed and sleeping bag, and slept on the floor. Every morning I'd wipe down the air bed, and every day I'd put the sleeping bag in the washing machine at a high temperature, along with detergent, ammonia and borax. That helped. That was the first sign that I could do something myself to alleviate the nightmare. I remember one evening clearing up in the kitchen, and feeling a sharp bite on my arm. I looked down and there was this tiny pale thing on my skin - it was at a right angle to my arm, as though it had its head buried in my flesh. I quickly picked it off and stuck it to a piece of white card with some sellotape. I then stuck the card on the fridge door like a peculiar trophy. Every time I looked at it, I felt angry that something so tiny could cause me such stress, pain, illness and worry.
It was clear that the Pest Control Company with which I'd had dealings, had not been successful in their treatment of the house. So I found another. They came out and had a look round. I showed the guy up into the loft and was instantly bitten in numerous places. There were black 'dots' all over the place up there, and he confirmed they were bird mites. He said he wanted to treat the whole house, starting at the loft and working downwards. That sounded much more sensible than what the first company had done. He said he was going to use a top of the range insecticide, and that it would take him at least 2 hours to complete (whereas the other company had been in and out in 10 minutes flat on each of the two occasions they visited). His whole approach was so much more professional than the men who'd come out before. We all moved out for the night again, and I had some hope that this might be the beginning of the end.
To start with, things got better. One night, around four days after the house had been treated, I had no bites at all. It was wonderful. But then they started again, and after around two weeks, began to get more severe once more. My mother was going on holiday and said we could stay at her place for the week - I leapt at the chance to be out of our home. We'd been gone one day when the second Pest Control company called and asked how things were going. I said it had got better but then worse. They asked to come and put down some special pest traps, so I met them at our place and let them in. They laid half a dozen traps all over the house and said they'd come back on the Friday to collect them. We stayed away for that week - I had a few bites whilst we were away, but not nearly as many. However, this did tell me that my skin was now probably infested, as well as our home; as the previous time we'd stayed away (which was only a month before) I had no bites at all. I met the PCO at the house on Friday and he went in to collect the pest traps: They were all empty. Fantastic. He said either the mites had now gone, or just perhaps they hadn't ventured 'out' because there was nobody there on which to feed. He advised me to move back to act as 'bait' if they were still there. I agreed, because I half hoped that empty pest traps meant no more pests. Within 24 hours of being back in the house, my daughter and I had been bitten again.
The PCO came out again the following Wednesday to look at the traps. They all contained black 'dots' which, he said, were mites. We went up to my bedroom to get the trap he'd laid in there, when he yelped. He picked something off his head and put it under his loupe - a bird mite had bitten him (and this was the middle of the afternoon). He suggested that the mites might be in the cavity walls, and that is why the whole house treatment had not killed them. He said drilling into the cavity walls and treating the cavities would be the recommended next step. I was reaching the end of my tether. I called the local council's Environmental Health Office and asked the man there what I should do. He gave me lots of advice about washing (everything on at least 60 degrees) and cleaning (use cleaners with orange oil as mites do not like citrus in any form). He then asked if he could come round and take a look at the house for himself, which was fine by me. He came out a few days' later and had a good look around. He collected some of the pest traps the PCO had left behind, and took them away with him. I had an email from him the next day saying he'd examined them, and whilst he could not identify the species, he could confirm they were mites, and almost certainly bird mites. Whilst he was at our house, he advised me that in his opinion much of our belongings may have been colonised - certainly things like sofas and beds, soft woods, and even the pictures on the walls as the mites seemed to be living inside the walls.
At this point I decided I'd had enough. It had been almost 3 months, and I couldn't take any more. I was getting out of there and taking my children with me. I talked to my mother, who agreed we could go and stay with her, although it would be cramped, and moving back in with your mother at my age is not really what you want to do. I saw the Letting Agent who rented us the house, and with whom I'd been dealing throughout the whole saga, and told them I was going. I contracted a house clearance firm to come and take away almost everything we owned. Over the next few days, I carefully packed up the things I wanted to take with us: Precious photos of my children in years gone by; the 'memory boxes' I'd kept of special things from their schools, some of my grandmother's possessions which meant a lot to me. I kept the brand new TV for which we'd saved, so we had a nice TV on which to watch the London Olympics just three weeks before this nightmare began. I kept the computer and the laptop, but it all went into storage. Everything was put into large plastic tubs, along with pest strips, moth balls and essential oils, and each box was duct-taped closed so anything inside could not get out. All in all we had 10 plastic tubs of belongings - around 5%, or maybe less, of the stuff we owned. We kept enough clothes to keep us going, but the vast majority of our clothes and shoes were left behind. I am someone who loves books, and had hundreds, but they were all left, other than two written by a family member, which I wasn't sure I'd ever find again. I was determined that I would not be someone who lived with mites as a factor in our lives - I wanted to be a mite survivor rather than a mite victim, and if that meant giving up possessions, that's what I would do.
I was very honest with the house clearance firm. I told them about the infestation and that I wanted everything incinerated or disposed of. Nothing was to be passed on to anyone else. There was no way I wanted to risk anybody else having to go through this misery. A team of five men, all wearing protective plastic suits turned up on the appointed day. It took them roughly four hours to put almost everything we'd owned into some vans. They called me when they'd finished and I went over there to make sure it was all gone. Despite wearing the protective clothing, three of them had been bitten whilst moving all our stuff. In that moment, I knew I'd done absolutely the right thing in getting out of there.
If I hoped that was the end of the bites, I was sadly mistaken. Despite sleeping on an airbed on the floor of a room in my mother's house, I continued to wake up with bites. I also continued to experience crawling sensations on my skin. There was no doubt that my skin was now 'carrying' these things. I went back to the doctor who referred me to a colleague of hers who specialised in dermatology. He told me that scientific wisdom dictated that bird mites could not live on humans for longer than around 3-4 weeks, and that my skin would soon be clear. He didn't contend that I had been home to mites, and said if I was still in the property that was infested, he'd agree I was at risk of continuing to be a host. I asked him what was in bird blood that these mites could not get from human blood. He said he didn't know, but that there must be something. That unscientific reply did not satisfy me and he knew it. He felt I had developed Papular Urticaria as a result of my strong allergic reaction to the mites, and that that might be what was at least partly causing my rashes now. I had also developed Dermographia - which means when things are pressed or rubbed on the skin, it comes up in a swollen welt. He said he wanted to see me in the mornings when the rash was at its worst, so I dutifully traipsed into the surgery one morning when I had a trail of red bites diagonally across my body. He examined my skin closely with a magnifying glass, and announced that *that* was not a textbook presentation of papular urticaria. I didn't say 'perhaps because it's not?' but the question hung in the air. He seemed to take me a lot more seriously after that day. He asked to see me again if I woke up one morning with a particularly bad rash, and in the meantime prescribed an anti-histamine I could tolerate, along with another drug, and some menthol skin cream. I was now starting to sleep better, which led me to believe that the mite activity was less than it had been. However, I woke up one morning with an extremely severe rash, so went back to the doctor. His receptionist was not impressed that I'd turned up without an appointment, and even less impressed when he said he'd see me right away. He took one look at my skin and exclaimed that that was bad. Er yes ... it was. I think he began to wonder if I had two problems - the bites and urticaria. He upped my dosage of the medications and asked to see me regularly. I should add that my children suffered no more bites once we'd left our previous home, and my mother had no bites from us being in her home.
I was living with fairly strict protocols at this time (see the tab 'My Protocol' above for details), and some days felt like I was getting somewhere. But on other days I'd be as bad as ever and feel very discouraged. But eventually, things were getting noticeably better. I started keeping a diary of bites and sensations, and this way could clearly see that I was getting less and less marks on my skin. After around eight weeks of being out of the infested house, the bites were down to maybe three or four a week. After three months they stopped altogether. I was still getting sensations, but no more bites, and I was sure I was now 'winning' this battle. After another three months of sensations, those largely stopped too, but they didn't disappear entirely. That happened when I was prescribed antibiotics (Amoxycillin) for a lung infection a few months later. I believe there must have been 'something' bacterial left on my skin which was killed off by the antibiotics. After I stopped taking them, I was tickle-free for almost a week, but then it returned at a low level. I went back to the dermatologist and told him what had happened. He said I was "weird" (I didn't contend the opinion!) but that he was happy to prescribe more. That second course got rid of all the sensations, and the dermatologist has given me an open prescription to get filled if and when I ever need it again in future. He wondered if there was a link to the fact that Rosacea is sometimes treated with antibiotics. I kept quiet about the forums I'd read in which Rosacea is firmly believed to be the result of Demodex Mite activity on our skin.
After we'd moved out of the infested house I got in touch with the scientific royalty of the bird mite world: Drs Olivier Sparagano, and Dave George (at the University of Northumbria) and they both wrote with advice based on their experiences. I would like to thank them for their time and information. I was also in touch with Jane Ishka, author of 'The Year of The Mite' website (and upcoming book) who was incredibly supportive and encouraging. I didn't feel quite as alone in fighting this once I had made personal contact with someone else who had been through the same thing. Dr George was interested in finding out precisely what species of mite I had been battling, but I found nothing in the pest traps I laid at my mother's place. I contacted the Environmental Health Officer who had been to our previous home, but he hadn't kept the samples he'd taken. so we still don't know.
You will find lots of information online about just how long these mites can live without a host. Nobody knows for sure, but I can say that I got a tub out of storage after a little over 6 months. It was still taped up, and had been stored in a friend's loft all winter. It contained kitchen equipment: non-porous items like baking dishes and cake tins. I unpacked them all, wiped them over with orange cleaner and essential oils, and then put them through two cycles on the hottest setting of the dishwasher (to sterilise them, and get rid of the pungent smell of mothballs). Four hours later, I had a bite. It was only one bite, and I have enough protocols in place to make me reasonably confident that I will not suffer a reinfestation, but it showed me personally that 6 months in storage is not enough time for the relatively few possessions we kept to be mite free. After 9 months in storage, I got out some jewellery and cleaned it thoroughly. I've only worn a couple of pieces, but so far so good - no bites. For the time being everything else that's in storage stays in storage.
