Doctors and other medical people of SD. Disclaimer: I consulted my daughter’s doctor and the county Health department after this recent incident, and both advised against rabies shots.
I’ve been going crazy because my 19 year old daughter may have touched a bat, yet was not recommended for rabies shots. I almost wish they had just gone with the shots. Here’s the scenario:
We were walking along around dusk, had gone out late for our nightly power walk. Suddenly we came upon a group of bats on the path that swooped around us. One swooped across us to the front from right (my daughter was on the right) to left. It seemed to be about three feet away from us. A day or two later she said “something brushed my hand when that happened I’m not sure what”. (we were power walking and her right hand was on the up swing). We were on a leafy/shrubby path walking abreast so it could have been a leaf or branch at the side of the path. I had a clear view of the bat although it was blurry, and didn’t see it touch either one of us. I can’t imagine it would have come that close without my noticing. :eek: My daughter states unequivocally that she wasn’t bitten or scratched, and when we inspected her hand a day or two later there were no evident marks.
Should I still be worried and want her to get the shots? Or am I being silly. Like I mentioned, her own physician and the county health department said no shots.
I’m not asking for medical advice, just reassurance I guess. I’ve looked at a lot of medical web sites and found conflicting yet mostly comforting info (such as. cavers who have lots of contact with bats and no problems). Would like input from any and all not just medical types, even if it’s just links to risk assessment resources.
Disclaimer #2: I have OCD and a particular phobia of rabies. Even I take everything I think about rabies related incidents with a grain of salt. In the past I have gotten the rabies series and so has my daughter after trivial bat related incidents. Not sure if what I’m thinking is real or part of a mental illness. So frustrating. I hope to find information that will help. Thanks to all.
You’re being silly. Rabies shots, from what I hear, are more than a little unpleasant. Not the kind of thing you go through without damn good reason. You do not have a damn good reason to subject your daughter to the shots. At least two different medical professionals have already told you that.
On a similarly silly note, at first I thought the thread title was “Bat encounter and babies risk”. I thought to myself “Well, this should certainly be interesting.”
How long ago did she get the rabies series? There ought to be protection for some time after a series. I had most of the series of rabies shots two years ago due to a bite by an unvaccinated, outdoor cat. The officials discontinued the series before it was completed because the vaccine was in critically short supply (and the cat was very obviously all right), but they said I should have partial-to-total protection for a considerable period of time. I am the go-to guy now when an animal is acting funny, since I am better-protected than most people.
It’s possible your daughter’s past vaccinations provide her partial or complete protection even in the apparently unlikely event she was exposed.
The bat didn’t even come within three feet of her. A bat is extremely unlikely to even brush against someone; their sonar enables them to avoid obstacles and the last thing they want to do is touch a person. Whatever your daughter felt, it wasn’t a bat.
If the only reason you have to be concerned about rabies is that a bat flew close, then you are being silly. You have no evidence the bat even touched her; and even if it did you have evidence that it didn’t bite or scratch her. So relax.
We’ve had a couple incidents in my home with bats flying around inside the place. My spouse found a nearly frozen bat a few years ago and rehabbed it. Certainly, for the latter we were in close proximity to a wild bat for considerably longer than you daughter was, if she got touched at all.
No rabies here. NOT that I recommended wildlife rehabbing to anyone, please don’t try this at home.
The point is, if there was no contact between bat body fluids and you, there is no rabies transmission. If there was no scratch and no bite, there was no rabies transmission. If there was no contact (most likely what she felt was a leaf or something) there was no rabies transmission.
Yes, there have been a very few cases otherwise… so far as I know, ALWAYS in a cave or other enclosed environment. Which does not apply here.
Medical professionals have advised against the shots.
Thanks everyone, for your replies. Believe it or not it helps to have multiple people tell me I’m silly. My daughter had no breaks in the skin on her hand, only one very well documented (no break/blood for three days) and days since healed-over crack from dry skin. It was more like a scar at that point. She states without equivocation that she felt no bite or scratch and a couple of days later there was only the almost totally healed scar of the aforementioned crack, nothing else marking her skin. I know it may be OCD when the appropriate medical professionals give advice, but I start to wonder if they are wrong. Her own physician and the county health dept both advised against the shots. I am often “silly” about this and other diseases… so thanks again. Any and all thoughts are appreciated.
And, someone correct me if I’m wrong, but since rabies is so slow-acting, isn’t it possible to start the series of vaccinations even after the first symptoms appear? I know there is a “point-of-n-return” with regard to the symptoms/progression of the disease, but IIRC it takes a while to get there.
I also remember the case a few years ago of the young girl being the first documented case in modern medicine to have rabies, not get any vaccinations, but recover. Anyone know the status of that? Was it a full recovery? Did she have complications or have some sort of rehab?
She was 10 or 11 years old when she had the complete PEP series. Prior to that, she also had an incomplete rabies series at age 6 when an unvaccinated cat bit her in the face, then ran away from home. We managed to catch and quarantine the cat (our indoor pet) and were able to discontinue the shots that time. Cat lived for at least ten years after that…
In 2004, 15 yo Jeanna Giese survived rabies by being put into a therapeutic coma while the virus thrashed her brain about, it didn’t damage her body as much. I think Jeanna has already graduated college. The therapy was called the Milwaukee protocol after the place where it was invented. The same treatment was used for Precious Reynolds, a California 8 year old who also survived rabies under deep sedation. So far it’s been tried on about 35 people and 4 have survived. This is a revolution in rabies medicine as previous treatments had historically had a 100% failure rate.
OCD has made me study a lot about the things I fear! Lol.
No, I believe this is wrong - once rabies becomes symptomatic, you’re almost certainly going to die in agony. (In a very few cases, people have survived through heroic supportive care - but this isn’t the sort of thing one wishes to bet on.) And a quick googling turned up the North Dakota health department’s webpage, with the following in ominious italics:
As a previous recipient of PEP, she should retain at least some immunity to the rabies virus for a lifetime, unless there’s some reason to believe her immune system is compromised. In the unlikely event that she had an exposure to the virus from what seems like unlikely contact with a bat, then she should have enough antibodies on board to squash it.
If it makes you feel better, human rabies in the U.S. is pretty rare. In 2011, we’ve only had 3 cases, two of which were imported from other countries. And yet people have random brushes with potentally rabid animals all the time. Bats, especially. If it was very easy to contract rabies from bats, we would certainly see more cases.
Here’s another comforting factoid. Since modern rabies vaccines have been in use, no one in the U.S. who has previously recieved a full course of rabies PEP has died from rabies after having a later exposure.
I wouldn’t call anyone “silly” for worrying about rabies, but you shouldn’t worry in this situation.
So this thread made me want to read up on rabies, because I was wondering why the virus killed such a high percentage (100%!) of its hosts. Killing the host kills you, too, if you’re a virus. Seems pretty stupid from an evolution standpoint. Or are there species that can be rabies carriers?
Anyway, I stumbled on this definition of hydrophobia: “shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot quench his or her thirst.” :eek: Why does this happen? Is it like one of those mind-control things where the virus can’t stand water, so it makes you stop drinking it? Like that zombie fungus that can control an ant’s mind and make it move to a more optimally fungusy location? Can intravenous hydration counteract this effect?
Also, how does an induced coma work to fight rabies? Do you just wait for the virus to get bored and go somewhere else? (lol) or does it have a short uh, half-life, or what?
I believe that what the new protocol does is essentially stop mental action and let the meningitis like symptoms continue while the body fights the virus off, and you support the body with liquids and nutrients, and one would assume some sort of maintenance sedation to help the patient ride it out.
From what I remember there are convulsions, and some pretty solid muscle spasms, so part of the enforced sedation probably protects the body from damaging itself.
There has no been no reliable data that shows this, even though you’ll encounter a few scientists who believe this phenomenon occurs in rare cases. But based on what we know about the virus, any animal that is infectious for the virus is considered diseased.
Persons with hydrophobia often have larygneal spasms when presented with water. I’m not sure if there is definitive answer to “why” the thought of drinking produces anxiety in these people, but it probably has something to do with dysfunction in the brain related with swallowing.
No. The virus is not hindered by a person or animal drinking. Hydrophobia isn’t present in all cases.
Brain metabolism in comatose patients is slow, which means viral replication and spread slows down too. This allows the body’s immune system to catch up with the virus and subsequently overwhelm it with antibodies. Or so the theory goes.
