Beds bugs at Hennepin County Medical Center? It's gotta be the patient's fault.
Amy Van Blaricum knows bed bugs when she sees them.
Eight years ago, her Loring Park apartment was overrun. Their bites itched and swelled. She would feel them crawl over her skin and find their bodies on the floor. It took hundreds of dollars worth of pest control to get the infestation under wraps.
The 37-year-old didn’t see another bed bug until Wednesday, when she went to the Hennepin County Medical Center’s 701 Park Ave. emergency room to get some x-rays after slipping on the ice and mangling her back. Five minutes into her stay, Van Blaricum says, two bed bugs crawled onto her from the hospital bed.
She swept them off and called a nurse, who jarred one of the bugs for testing. It was a verified bed bug.
But hospital staff immediately tried to blame Van Blaricum for the infestation, she says. They entered her room wearing hazmat suits, accusing her of bringing them into HCMC. They told her to shower in a decontamination room stocked with bins of bed bug safety equipment, and put her clothes in a bag to take home. A bug sniffing dog scouted every room she entered.
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