Theresa Braine

It is said that having bed bugs changes a person. I guess one could say that about me, given that I think about them pretty regularly—even two apartments and nearly three years after it all started.

Late last year an outfit named Quirk Books out of Philadelphia saw fit to publish an intriguing-sounding novel. Bedbugs, by Ben H. Winters, promised to be a thriller of the NYC kind, whose protagonists, Susan and Alex Wendt and their three-year-old daughter, Emma, land the quintessential too-good-to-be-true Brooklyn apartment and find out, of course that it’s just that. 

Bedbugged! is a weekly column by journalist and bed bug survivor Theresa Braine. For more, click here. Those of us who follow bed bug news noted the recent discovery of bed bugs at the Ritz-Carlton hotel on Central Park South. 

The unpacking was underway. I pulled my things out of storage and started to take out possessions I hadn’t seen in two years. Suddenly I noticed some bed bugs.

Bedbugged! is a weekly column by journalist and bed bug survivor Theresa Braine. For more, click here.

I’ve been writing Bedbugged! for just over a year now, and as I close out my first full calendar year I’d like to look back on how far we have come in bed bug awareness, by highlighting the most telling columns of 2011 (in hopes that they’ll help anyone dealing with bed bugs).