I remember being told over and over by adults while growing up that getting old sucks, but I don’t think they meant that something is literally sucking the life out of you. Unfortunately, for senior residents in Hanover, Massachusetts are actually having the lifeblood sucked straight out of them. By who, you ask? Who else would the culprit be but the infamous bed bug? Yep, one senior apartment complex in Hanover is riddled with these unwanted guests, and they are literally sucking the life out of its residents.

Cushing Residence is an apartment complex on Elmwood Farm Dr. for senior citizens over the age of 62 as well as those with disabilities. You would think that we would want to make sure our elder and disabled citizens are at least living in a clean and healthy environment. However, the Hanover Board of Health recently decided to get involved when they began to get calls from the residents of the apartments complaining about the buildings being infested with bed bugs. Health Agent Kim Dixon is currently working with the management company, Preservation Management, Inc., to fix this bed bug problem. While residents of Cushing Residence haven’t commented on how well the current treatment is working, Dixon has said that the treatment of the complex for bed bugs by the management company has been helping, and that there has been a decrease of bed bug infestations in the apartments.

This is certainly not an uncommon occurrence, unfortunately. Despite the best efforts of humans, bed bugs have been and will probably always be a common problem in apartment complexes. Traveling between rooms and from one apartment to another is incredibly easy for bed bugs, as they can simply hitch a ride on items such as clothes, luggage, furniture, among other things. This means even if they start out infesting just one of the apartments, they can hop on over to the others very easily, making them spread like wildfire in these close quarters. Bed bug bites can cause a number of health problems such as skin rashes and many different kinds of allergic reactions. Needless to say, these are insect pests we definitely don’t want our senior citizens living around.

Have you ever seen a bed bug infestation in a senior apartment complex or facility? How bad were the effects of the bed bugs bites on the residents?