Yesterday, I solved the mystery of Noah’s Canadian hive attack. All the pieces just came together in a moment of clarity (after daydreaming no less - how apropos). The final piece of the puzzle was right in front of my face for the last few days, but it took some nausea and imbalance for it all to fall into place.
The revelation took root as I was pondering the bumps on my hand – bumps that I had heretofore thought were mosquito bites, but that looked increasingly like the initial bites Noah started out with – a couple dozen small bumps located on the sides of fingers and on the top of my hands. Then I started to feel a bit nauseous and unsteady on my feet and had to take another one of my handy dandy labyrinthitis coping pills – meclizine (Dramamine Non-Drowsy). I was disappointed as I had not taken a pill since the Friday prior and was thinking that I was beyond the need for them (I took them twice a day throughout the entire Canada trip). Then it hit me, it was after I stopped taking the pill that the bites that looked like Noah’s original condition appeared. Meclizine is an antihistamine – it must have suppressed the reaction. Noah and I both were attacked at the same time, but my reaction was knocked down by the constant antihistamine use. That means that Noah’s extreme allergic reaction was because of a multitude of bites that his system could not knock down.
Noah said to me after the first night at the Alpengruss (which I had denoted as “quaint”) - this place is ghetto – there are blood marks on the sheets and I know they didn’t come from me. Upon looking at his sheets I could see that there were what appeared to be small dried blood marks on the sheets near the pillow area. We had not seen them when we arrived late the night before as we pretty much just hit the sack. At the time, I thought it was just a matter of needing new sheets, but now I realize it was the key to the entire mystery. The culprit of Noah’s terrible affliction and my less dramatic, but also unpleasant affliction - bedbugs.
You have likely heard quite a lot about bedbugs over the past few years. They have become quite a problem. I travel a fair amount, but I can’t say I have ever experienced them until now. Alas, once is enough to make me realize that I hope to never experience them again. Bedbug bites can take up to 14 days to materialize. If you find yourself with an inordinate amounts of small bites clustered together that seem to multiply over a number of hours or days think back to where you have been lately (and as evidenced in my case, think about what you might have been taking that could have suppressed the reaction).
I am happy to have solved this mystery as icky a realization as it is, but it doesn’t help Noah who is on medication for four weeks due to the reaction he had. Luckily, most folks are only mildly inconvenienced by the nasty little creatures. The real travesty is if you manage to bring them home with you in your luggage as they are very difficult to eradicate. I think we dodged that bullet – thank goodness.
I am happy that I have solved the mystery, but I sort of wish I didn’t know what I know now. It makes me very wary of where I will lay my head in the future; and, as Noah says – no more “quaint” lodging for us. 
Day one thousand one hundred and thirty-nine of the new forty – obla di obla da
Ms. C
