A subway rider says the TTC needs to clean up its act after she was bitten by a bedbug on her way home from work Wednesday night.

Chrysanthi Michaelides boarded an eastbound train at Islington Station at around 10:30 p.m. and grabbed a seat.

“Shortly after I sat down, I felt a sharp bite on my buttock,” she told the Sun. “I was quite surprised. I jumped in my seat.”

She said after checking the seat, there was no sign of anything so she sat back down.

A few minutes later, another bite, in the same spot.

“Later when I got home, I thought to myself, ‘What could that have been?’” she said. “I got a little worried so I put all my clothes into the freezer because I didn’t know.”

Michaelides said she was awoken during the night by a burning sensation from the bites.

The next morning, after some online research, she concluded her bites were consistent with those doled out by bedbugs, she said.

“I called Public Health and reported it. I told them what the bites looked like, gave them the whole story and they said it definitely sounded like a bedbug,” she said.

Michaelides said she called the TTC and was told that there’s nothing they can do without knowing the four-digit subway car number that she was on.

“But I said to them, ‘If I tell you detail for detail specifically where I was, the time that I boarded the train, where I was sitting ... can you not look through your logs?’” she said.

Michaelides works as an accountant for a production company and says she’s missed work because her boss doesn’t want her bringing in bedbugs.

“I’m doing everything Public Health told me to do,” she said. “I have laundry going, I’m vacuuming, taking apart sofas ... it’s ridiculous.”

Michaelides said she wants the TTC to acknowledge what happened and make sure subway cars are kept clean so that the bedbugs don’t spread.

TTC spokesman Brad Ross said they take such bedbug reports seriously but without the subway car number, it’s very difficult to narrow things down.

“There are six cars per train, which run every two to three minutes, making it difficult to identify a specific car,” he said in an e-mail.

“If we have a vehicle number, we can investigate and clean.

“Bedbugs are brought aboard from time to time by riders. Public health officials advise that public transit is not conducive to bedbugs thriving. In other words, they do not nest or infest vehicles.”

dmckenzie@postmedia.com