I may never leave the house.
I agree. Never say never. I know someone who went to a dermatologist and was diagnosed with psoriasis. Nothing worked at all on it. Finally someone told her it looked more like bed bug bites. She paid for a specially trained dog to go through and it alerted to them.
Bed bugs have specific habits like hiding in the wood in a room and coming out at dawn. They can be hard to detect as you may not see them. It can also be a nightmare to deal with and can end up costing zillions.
Pac NW here…we’ve had really bad hobo spider problems in the area that sound just like your bites. It’s common for secondary staph infection to result also.
These are all good suggestions and I appreciate all the input. However, without going into endless detail about my sleeping and housekeeping arrangements, the one that meets the most likely criteria is “spider.”
I expose a lot of skin when I sleep. No bites anywhere but my forearms.
Bed partner not bitten.
Sheets laundered frequently.
Pillows in hypoallergenic covers.
No bedbug stains or signs anywhere.
No bedbug exposure (travel, new or acquired linens, etc.) since at least last summer.
No flying critters noted.
Dogs don’t have fleas and very sensitive bed partner has had no bites.
Bites seem to come in early morning, long after I’ve stopped positioning them under the pillow.
Never any multiple “bites” as would be expected from mosquitoes, fleas or allergic reactions.
Bite pattern, reaction and slow healing matches “spider.”
So I’m going to pick “Spiders” for $200, Alex, and see what happens. 
I’ll also note that bigger spiders (like hobos…spider that is…not the railway tramp, though also a low-probability possibility for your problem) don’t care about laundering, sheets, etc. They’re big and fast, roaming predators that don’t just perch on a web, scutter all over the house, and return back to their holes in the walls and floors (or take a breather on top of your shower head in the mornings).
Mrs G sleeps with a lot of skin exposed, and has been chomped on a lot. I bury beneath blankets and never have had a bite.
Do they hide in cracks of the woodwork.
I basically sleep without covers, unless you count 170-300 pounds of dog. :rolleyes:
That I’m bitten nowhere on far more tasty and tender exposed skin would seem to rule out many of the possibilities. It’s a sneakybastard arachnid that lives up under the headboard area, betcha betcha.
Wendigo
Yes. And they’ll burrow themselves into paper and cardboard. They’re hard to detect on your own and a nightmare to deal with. A lot of pesticides are ineffective. The people I know who had them had to get rid of their bed, couch, carpeting, nightstands and dresser as well as some of their clothing. The bugs were just too dug in to fix all of it.
They are thinking of bringing back DDT to combat the spreading invasion.
Which, if it’s used selectively and in controlled amounts, is a good thing. DDT is an excellent pesticide with very little effect on humans, and only a problem if you dump it on farms by the megaton.
It is unlikely to be a spider as they would have no reason to continue to bite you each night. Their bite is defensive, they are not feeding off of you.
Pattern does sound like a feeding schedule which sounds like a bed bug feeding.
That’s how I got bit. He was on my side and my put my arm down right on top of him. So he bit me. It was self defense.
When I had them in Winter 2014, I was extremely lucky in that we had some persistent periods of -20 and lower. I bagged my mattress and all of the contents of my linen closet and threw them on the porch for a bit over 48 hours. When I took everything back in and shook the blankets and towels out over the tub, there were a couple that fell out, very dead. Have not had an issue since.
Note: The difference between zero degrees and -20 is HUGE when it comes to killing these damned things. Twenty below, around 48 hours. Zero? Got a week or more? On the other hand, if you can bag them in black and put them out in full sun on a >100 degree day, you might have a shot, as you need something like 130 degrees for a couple of hours to do the job. There are special trucks that can heat all of your possessions at once so that you don’t end up losing everything.
Oh, and we may as well go with Nano-Vampires for the OP’s issues. Or a spider who thinks he’s tasty. Same thing.
Autistic Vampire?
The far rarer northern widow aside (I’ve only seen one once, let alone been bitten by one), the bitey spiders you’re going to find in new England are carolina wolf spiders and eastern parson spiders. I’ve been bitten by both and while the wolf spider bite arguable hurts worse, I f’n hate parson spiders. I had one of the little bastards run across my arm and bite me three times before I could even lift the other hand to brush it off. And when I had a nest of them under my bed I ended up with over a dozen bites on the small of my back before I moved the bed and vacuumed them up. They definitely bite with less provocation than a wolf spider, and more than once if they can manage it.
<nitpick> It’s a staph infection. Short for staphylococcus. Not staff. </nitpick>
Much as they annoy me, I think it’s time for a dermatologist visit. This doesn’t sound anything like *any *bug bite that I’m familiar with. Spiders don’t return to the scene of the crime night after night, nor bite humans aggressively, bedbug bites almost never happen singly, ditto chiggers, fleas, flies, ants or lice. Ticks might show up one at a time, but they like to hang on for 24 or more hours, so you wouldn’t wake up with a bite and no tick morning after morning.
I’m stumped.
That does not follow what you described.
What you state may be the case in a one off situation - perhaps twice, but you described a daily or every other day feeding pattern, so the bites were not self defense.
Bedbug bites can happen singularly, especially in the early stages of a infestation. Bedbugs have patterns of biting that can take many forms. They also typically like the same area of the body they are feeding on and will return to it. Signs of infestation are not always seen either.
The only part that does not seem bedbuggish is that it is happening daily, bedbugs usually feed on 5-7 days cycles, however multiple bedbugs can fill out a week.
I went through something very similar. I was sure something was biting me in the bed at night. Nothing on the husband. Sprayed a bunch of pesticide around the bed, to no effect.
I saw the doctor; turns out they were small hives. I was having an allergic reaction.