And so it won’t be said that I’m a tease:
Rabies and Arabs
Not too long after he moved to Mid-Town Atlanta (a very diverse place- at least 3% of its residents are straight) he was biking the five miles to work when a black dog that barked at him everyday, usually from a chain, barked at him again, but this time without the chain. The dog attacked T.E., broke the skin in a couple of places (nothing bad- he was hurt more by falling off his bike), then ran off. He continued on to work.
His boss, who happened to have a phobia of dogs, immediately told him “take sick leave, go to the hospital, have those things checked out! You could have rabies!” T.E. laughed it off at first, but then googled rabies. Now, T.E.'s the sort of person who reads descriptions of natural childbirth and somehow starts crowning, and every site said pretty much the same thing: 100% fatal if not detected, and virtually untreatable after the first symptoms present themselves (which is a few days after attack). Within minutes he could feel the froth forming in his mouth and could see the tunnel of light opening, so he headed home.
Halfway home he stops at the place where he was bitten. He notices that there’s a junkyard there. The Arab (or Arab-like) people who own the junkyard are very friendly, until he tells them he was bitten by a black dog there this morning and asks if it’s theirs. “No! No dog here!” and, as if on cue, he hears from the back “Roaf! Roaf! Wor-wor-wor-wor-worf!”
“Is that your dog?”
“No… no dog here…”
“I hear the dog…”
“Oh… he’s our dog. Not loose this morning.”
“Can I see him?”
“No… not the right dog.”
“Is he a black dog?”
“Dark.”
“Is he dark as in black?”
“Dark.”
“Can I go back there and see him?”
“No… insurance… can’t do. Dark.”
So he goes on home, calls animal control. Tthey tell him they can’t pick up the dog from the junkyard without a positive I.D. and that even if they did they’d have to quarantine the animal and watch it for several days, during which he would develop symptoms if he’d been infected, unless they destroy the animal (then they can tell instantly). He debates going to the hospital, but he finally does.
There the ER folk clean the wound, which isn’t bad, and the doctor looks at it and tells him “There’s no point in getting rabies shots. The odds against getting rabies from a wound that shallow are astronomical.”
“Astronomical… but not impossible.”
“Well, nothing’s impossible, but…”
“I want the shots, please.”
“Let me explain something to you…” and the doctor, it turns out, authored a professional article years before about rabies in coon hunters in the GA/FL/AL area. It turns out that most coon hunters he tested actually tested positive for rabies- they acquired it from their dogs or from the coons, but in such small amounts that it not only didn’t kill them or make them seriously sick, but actually gave them some natural immunity to the disease. “So you see, I guarantee you those coon hunters got more exposure than you got, and that’s assuming that the dog even had rabies, which is far from probably living in downtown Atlanta.”
“But it’s not impossible?”
“It’s not impossible, but you’d have better odds of winning two consecutive PowerBall lotteries…”
“But it’s not impossible, and if I develop symptoms then it’s an untreatable agonizing death, right?”
“Technically, but…”
“I want the shots.”
By this time it’s after 2 am on a night before I have to work and he’s been calling me all night long with “should I go to the hospital?” Yes. “Should I call animal control?” Yes. “Should I contact the Arab guy?” NO! “Should I get the serum?” Your call. “Would you get the serum based on what the doctor told you?” No. “Could I die if I get rabies?” Yes. “Should I get into the hot-tub? Will it make me wet?” Yes. “Should I get into the hot tub/will it make me sweat?” Yes. Yadda yadda. But we both knew he was going to do it.
Piedmont Hospital had to have somebody search in their medical library for articles on the administration of rabies vaccines because since the last time they did a series it has changed majorly. (At one point you had to have more than a dozen shots in the belly, but now it’s just six in various regions.) They do keep the serum on hand, but they had never had to use it. Half of the staff on duty at 3:00 a.m. turned out to watch T.E., wearing the backless gown over his naked body (a quite cute view, incidentally- he’s one of those slim guys who has a butt that comes out of nowhere when he takes his pants off), get his $14,000 worth of rabies treatment. (He was briefly worried that his insurance wouldn’t cover it, but then remembered that if it didn’t he wouldn’t pay it anyway because it would come in the form of a bill.) Two in the buttocks, two in the arms and two in the love handles (as memory serves).
He gets out around 4 a.m. and within minutes is on the phone to me. “Do you know what just occurred to me?”
“I don’t know… I don’t care… I love you, I’m glad you’re not foaming athte mouth, goodnight…”
“No… it just occurred to me… whether I had it when I went to the hospital or not… I’ve now got rabies in my body!”
“I’m happy for you baby, Goodnight…”
“No, dude, there is rabies in my body!”
“Well, next time you come to see me you are not playing with my dog. Goodnight.”
The next day on his way to work (after about four hours of sleep) he passes the junkyard and sees the black dog, barking at him, sitting on a car in the junkyard. He called Animal Control who wanted to be sure it was the right dog.
“I’m absolutely positive.”
“Well you know we’ll have to kill it to tell if it has rabies.”
“Can’t you just quarantine it?”
“Well…yeah… but that will take longer…” (and where’s the fun in that?).
“Well, I got the rabies shots so I’m not worried about myself. Just quarantine it to make sure that it’s free and clear.”
“You got rabies shots? In Atlanta?”
The dog, of course, was free and clear (though I had fun telling him "Just think, there’s a poor little Arab girl looking at her Daddy and saying ‘Papa… why did al-Fluffy have to go away?’ and hearing “Because, my beautiful Fatima, a homosexual Infidel so willed it!” and leading to a new generation of extremist). Soon the dog was back in the yard and the owners weren’t even fined or cited.
So the moral of the story is when you bike past an Arab junkyard in Atlanta, pedal harder.
