Woman Turned Away From Hospital Because Of Bed Bugs ( Denver )

An Aurora woman said she was turned away by a doctor for a pain injection because her home is infested with bed bugs.

Christine Lewis was set for a spinal injection at the Medical Center of Aurora South. She said everything was going fine until a nurse asked her about the bug bites that covered her arms.

Lewis said she was denied the injection and treatment. She said her doctor showed her the door. “He made the comment, he's like, it could be in your hair, it could be in your clothes and we can't have you bring that into our operating room,”

The patient is advised to have a licensed pest control company inspect and treat their home. If the home is still infested, the patient is encouraged to store a set of clothes for medical appointments in a sealed plastic bag. Those clothes should be sealed immediately after they are washed and dried on high heat.

The great story here in Northern Virginia was when the public libraries here had to shut down and insecticide and bake all their books because the bedbugs were climbing into the spines of children’s books (no mention of the language of the books).

You know how college guys live, and the places they go and the lack of hygiene...my curiosity is why haven’t we heard about massive infestations in college dorms?

I have done extensive electrical/communication work in dorms all over the Northeast and I can tell you without a doubt that the women's dorms are by far the biggest pig pens.

The hospital needs to have a protocol to deal with patients possibly infested with bed bugs - a sort of de lousing and steam clean their clothes. There must be others with the same problem, and if they don’t admit it to it - as this woman did - they can’t simply be sent away. Also, they might come in with a life threatening condition, so it would be unethical not to treat them.

Always right is right (again!) about the prevalence of this problem. There was a skin crawling article in the London Review of Books about the onward march of bedbugs. They can sneak into the most elite areas. And other insects too. In Sydney, Australia, there have been several seasons in the past when FLEAS took off. You might think that only a very dirty person would have fleas in their house - but not so. Some people affected had no pets and were up in high storey flats! Fortunately, fleas are easier to knock out with insecticides.

I suppose that the greenies will ban all insecticides, and we will all be bitten to death.

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