I was just going to mention the local case of a (n eleven-year-old) girl who died of rabies 10 years ago, whose family were unable to recall any exposure she might have had.
Then I looked at the CDC website, and say that nowadays, in the majority (I think it was maybe 28 out of the last 35 cases) of rabies cases health officials are unable to point to a probable time of exposure.
Here’s a heartbreaking case: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00040627.htm
God, that’s awful. When everything is characterized in sterile medical terms it is even more awful. How many people know that ascoria is your pupils gone haywire?
That it should happen to a little girl is almost inconceivable in terms of the image-bank of horror. Truly, I would rather be flayed alive or let Uday Hussein have his way with me.
When I was a young girl, my family lived on Sumatra. My dad was a doctor there, and he saw a fair number of rabies cases. I remember one man who died from it in his hospital. This was in the early 60s, and the treatment then was to sedate the patient until death. My dad used to tell the story of a man who came to the hospital with suspected rabies and was already having tremors in one hand. My dad injected vaccine in between the man’s fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, and he ultimately survived, although with some residual nerve damage in his hand and arm.
Our dog got rabies and bit me when I was six, and I had to have the full series of shots. At the time, the recommended course was fourteen shots in the abdomen, but because my dad was afraid to rely on the quality of vaccine (our dog had been vaccinated), he gave me twenty-one shots. And because the dog had licked his hands when he’d examined it originally, he also gave himself the series. I still have a problem with needles, and to this day, the smell of rubbing alcohol makes my stomach churn.
Wow. As a child in the tropics used to being given many, many shots, it is my recollection that the rabies series wasn’t that bad. People made it out to be that you’d have a horse-needle plunged into your stomach (not abdomen, but actual stomach!) but in fact it was quite civilised–the only problem was finding a fold of abdomen that hadn’t been injected, after a week. The nurse kept meticulous records of each injection site and moved around the clock each time.
To this day, I still don’t know why one had to be injected in the stomach, but after the third or so injection, it was quite a novelty. My little friends were certainly impressed.
I had a friend who had to undergo rabies vaccination along with about 130 other health care workers after a patient who died of rabies was diagnosed post mortum, and everyone who may have come in contact with him during his hospital stay was immunized. This happened about 6 months after the use of the 5-7 shot series of injections from cultured human fibroblasts was OK’d so it was not that painful. According to him, the original 14 shot series was spread throughout the body, including the arms, abdominal muscles and thighs because of the severe progressive pain and swelling each subsequent shot caused. The reaction was to the foriegn protein in the vaccine, which was developed using duck embryos, rather than any intrinsic reaction to the virus itself. And the pro-exposure vaccine has always been significantly more tolerable than the post exposure series.
Just a slight hijack on the same subject. If rabies is such a horrible way to die, why don’t humans get vaccinated like pets? Why can’t kids get this in their regular vaccinations? I’m a nurse, and I don’t get this. Maybe the answer is obvious…maybe I’m just stupid and don’t get it. I mean lots of folks have pets, lots of stray animals are running around, rabid animals can get wild and go after people, lots of stupid people don’t vaccinate their pets. It seems logical that humans could get rabies vaccine, and not have to wait until they get bitten.
When I was a kid and first heard about “mad dogs,” no one bothered to explain that it was “mad” as in “demented,” not “mad” as in “angry”–and that it was a disease that attacked the brain.
I just thought they died from being too mad (angry), which didn’t make any sense to me.
Virtually all diseases are survivable by someone. There are cases of people with Ebola, AIDS etc where people have had it and survived. The one guy with AIDS has weird deformed genes that allow him to have the disease but the virus can’t attach it self. So while he can pass it he does’t suffer.
There is always that one guy that smokes two packs a day and lives to be 90 without any cancer. (of course everyone ignores the other 99% that die)
So I don’t see why it should be so suprising. Very, very, extremely rare but not impossible.
SuperLorie, I’ve had the pre-prophylaxis series and although my insurance paid for it, it did cost several hundred dollars. I am not sure if that is a lot more expensive than other standard vaccines, but it does seem kind of a lot to me. I’d guess that although rabies is a horrible death, it is not actually all that common a disease to get in the U.S., assuming you are at a low risk, which most everyone in this country is.
If you are travelling to certain countries, you have to be vaccinated for rabies. My previous boss and his wife went to southeast Asia a few years ago (Thailand or Malaysia?) and they had to be vaccinated because something like 1 in 8 dogs (12.5%) is infected over there.
I don’t think most insurance companies cover it. Some of the veterinarians I worked with got the shot, and it * may* have been covered for them.
People working in public safety professions (police, public safety, animal wardens, etc.) ususally get the vaccinations through their employer.
When I got attacked and had to have the shots, the property owner’s insurance covered the cost ($410 per shot IIRC).
I got mine because I am heavily involved in feral-cat trap/neuter programs. So I called up Blue Cross Blue Shield and said I wanted to get the rabies series and wanted to make sure it was covered. They asked me why I wanted it and I told them. They at first said they wouldn’t pay for it because it was “my choice” to work with feral cats; however, if I were to travel to a country on vacation where there was a high incidence of rabies, I could definitely have the series covered.
I asked, “So you’re saying if I CHOOSE to go on vacation to Thailand or the wilds of Mexico, where there is a high incidence of rabies, you’ll pay for the shots - but if I CHOOSE to stay in THIS country and go somewhere where there is a high incidence of rabies, you won’t pay for it.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, you can see how that is illogical.”
“No, because you’re CHOOSING to have a dangerous hobby.”
“So, if I CHOOSE to go to hiking in the Mexico, that’s okay; and if I CHOOSE to sky-dive and I get injured, you’ll cover me, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okaaay. Well, I guess I’ll need to write a letter of complaint then to you and the state insurance board.”
I ended up getting the shots anyway and BCBS paid. Never heard a peep out of them.
I think you might be referring to the Wilbur Smith book “When the Lion Feeds,” in which Sean Courtney’s friend Duff Charleywood gets bitten by a rabid jackal.
They chain him to his bed, and Charleywood makes Courtney promise NOT to shoot him dead when he starts going crazy. Courtney watches him in his dying agonies, and puts a bullet into him right near the end.
Courtney watches him in his dying agonies, and puts a bullet into him right near the end.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to shoot him in the head? Or, by “right near the end” do you mean so that the bullet goes into his stomach?
Could I be… mad!
LOL
Of course, i meant near the (temporal) end of his death agonies, not the (locational) end of his torso.
A weird footnote: in his 1957 book The Incurable Wound, Berton Rouche wrote that, throughout most of history, it was believed int he western world that rabies was not fatal in humans. It can only be assumed that this means that infection in humans was extremely rare in most places at most times.
I distinctly recall that in 1972 it was widely reported that a person had survived rabies without being given vaccine. I recall that all sorts of extraordinary heroic measures had been taken, including, IIRC, the virtual replacement of his blood supply.
Possibly this story was later debunked. WHile I have not been able to find a cite for this story, I am reasonably certain about the year in which it happened, as I recall hearing this case discussed in my driver’s ed class when it was still breaking news. I took driver’s ed in Missouri and back then, at least, the class included a required section on first aid which included a discussion of rabies.
Here’s something I found. I think the child bitten on the thumb in 1970 is the first person to survive rabies.
http://www.tdh.state.tx.us/zoonosis/diseases/RABIES/RABBAT/human.asp