Uninvited guests spoil night at Arlington Heights hotel

When Angella Alston went to bed at the Sheraton Northwest Hotel on Saturday night, she thought she just had an itchy blanket.

Turns out she had a handful of bed bugs.

"I pulled back the sheet and there they were, two bugs on the sheet," said Alston, who found more on her pillow and under the mattress. "I squished one and blood came out. That's when I told my sister, 'This must be what a bed bug looks like.'"

The tiny reddish-brown insects, last seen in great numbers before World War II, are on the rebound nationwide. The Environmental Protection Agency held its first national bed bug summit last month to discuss their re-emergence.

Alston lives in Cincinnati but was in Arlington Heights for a funeral. She and her sister spent Saturday night sleeping in chairs.

Both a hotel spokesman and Arlington Heights Director of Health Services James McCalister confirmed the bed bugs. The hotel not only sealed off Alston's room but also 10 rooms nearby, said Antonette Smith, a hotel spokeswoman. The fumigation process will take 4-6 weeks, she said.

"This is something we take very seriously," Smith said. "We work very carefully to maintain the cleanest rooms possible."

McCalister said this is the second report this year of bed bugs at the hotel.

Bed bugs are small wingless insects that feed solely upon the blood of warm-blooded animals, according to the Harvard School of Public Health Web site.

Hatchling bed bugs are about the size of a poppy seed, and adults are about a quarter of an inch in length. From above they appear oval, but are flat from top to bottom; their flattened bodies allow them to conceal themselves in cracks and crevices around the room and within furniture, according to the Web site.

Bed bugs don't spread disease but cause itchy red welts on about 80 percent of people they bite, McCalister said. Typically, they get into a hotel on visitors' luggage or clothing, he said.

As for Alston, she wants the hotel to refund her $108.78 room bill, pay her medical bills and pay her a little for pain and suffering.

"I don't know how much that will be," she said. "All I know is that I drove five hours home itching like crazy and I'm a little ticked off."

Alston, 46, went to Northwest Community Hospital on Sunday and saw her doctor in Cincinnati on Monday, who prescribed antibiotics for her 40 or so welts, she said. Her sister suffered from only "a couple" of bites, she said.