Heeby Jeebies

The husband and I have lived in our current house for a little over three years now, and until this year, I had only seen like three spiders inside our house, ever. This year is SO much worse! It seems like all of the bugs are running rampant through everything. I've already killed like 10 spiders and there are ants all outside our house... BLECH. Anyway, the other night I got a bite while I was sleeping and I'm pretty sure it was a spider bite because I'm super allergic to spiders, and it got SOOOOOOOOO swollen, SO fast [we're talking about 4 inches in diameter, overnight].

I decided it was time to research spraying our house for icky creatures. I was on the Orkin website trying to figure out what spiders we have and what we can do, and I came across a page full of common household pests. On that page were bed bugs [shiver]. I remember not too long ago when they were a huge problem in hotels and such, and reading all the information about them made me so paranoid! Blech. I didn't realize they are so small [only like 3/16th of an inch - the size of an apple seed], and I've been itching ever since. Eww, eww, eww. And, they say that you can tell they are there because they will leave dark spots or small bloodstains when you roll over on them, but my sheets are dark blue! I can't see any small dark spots on my sheets. The site said that they don't carry any diseases that can be transmitted to humans, but I don't care. The thought of sharing my bed with bugs is just gross. They omit some sort of sweet but not good smell and I haven't noticed that anywhere in or around my room, but still. ICK.

I've had permanent heeby jeebies since being on that site. Have any of you ever had bed bugs? If so, was it bad? How did you know you had them? It's seriously freaking me out! :( EWWWWwwwWWwww. Am I being overly paranoid?