Hit in the eye by a bat!

[R0ca75]

A totally freak incident happened to me last night. I was getting the laundry in before the rain at dusk and a bat flew at full pelt straight into my left eye. At first I had no idea what had hit me but then saw the bat whizzing around in the garden.

There doesn't appear to be any broken skin but the area around my eye was red and my eye was sore from the impact for a couple of hours.

I'm not concerned anout the injury (eye feels almost normal this morning) but am I being a huge hypochondriac to worry about rabies seeing as the eye is a mucous membrane?

I rang 111 but they weren't very helpful. Would I be unreasonable to seek further advice seeing as the NHS is so stretched at the moment?

No advice but I wanted to add that I was hit on the head by a flying bat as a teenager and it really irritates me when people say 'it doesn't happen because echolocation' when it BLOODY DOES SOMETIMES

And here is David Attenborough to confirm

Meanwhile there’s a bat with a headache making a shocked post on BatsNet… 🦇 I hope you get seen/treated as needed OP, you are much more calm than I would be! Rabies is my irrational phobia.

This thread has made me remember I found a dead bat on the windowsill of my bedroom when I was about 10, it must’ve flown into it. I picked it up and brought it in, had a look at it then took it down to put in the garden. Didn’t occur to me how germy they were 🤮 anyway, no ill effects from that…

A bat flew into my son's forehead whilst we were on holiday in Devon recently and this never even occurred to me (and I'm usually THAT mum when it comes to anything medical). There was no broken skin, injury or anything else so I wasn't concerned.
Hope you get some advice quickly on whether it needs following up.

What a strange thing to happen! A proper freak accident as you say. Hope you get some decent advice. Does seem v low risk but a bag handler died from rabies in Scotland some yrs ago. My parents lived in west Africa decades ago and lived in fear of catching rabies - something about multiple injections in the stomach as part of the treatment.

No one has said that bats don't fly into people, @CosmopolitanPlease, just that it is unusual, and unusual behaviour can be a sign of infection.

Funnily enough, I would guess that the bat flew into David Attenborough because the cameraman turned the light off 😂Bats fly by vision in light, although the brighter the light, the poorer their vision (it is best at dusk). Poor thing was probably flying along, dazzled by the bright light, then plunged into darkness and crashed before it worked out what was going on. If a bat is flying by sight, turning off the lights will have the same effect as it would on you if you were running at full speed and suddenly the lights went off!

I woke up one morning and there was a dead bat in my bed, I also had a tiny red mark I thought could be a bite. I don't think it was but I was the same as you and started freaking out, I phoned my surgery and they took it very seriously and asked me to come in for the rabies shots. They order the vaccine from somewhere (not sure where but someone in government health had to be informed) I was also prescribed antibiotics that the chemist had to order in and said they were unusual.

I think it is taken seriously now in the uk partly as bad advice has been given in the past, I can think of two people that were infected abroad on holiday came back to the uk and told their doctors and were told no rabies vaccine was needed. They both died.

There was also a case in Australia of a little boy who was scratched when a bat flew into him and his parents didn't realise as it was such a non event that the boy never cried or told them. He died as well.

Same happened to me when I was running. 111 said "If you start showing symptoms [of rabies], ring back" 😆😆😆

(Once someone starts showing symptoms, it's too late...)

Crikey. This was funny until I read the last few posts. As with all things medical, if your gut tells you you're being fobbed off, get a second opinion

@hedgehogscrossing You are very lucky, I couldn't get it and spent overnight on the phone to 111 and waiting for them to call, then my doctors who did a telephone appointment only to refuse to order the vaccine, A&E said they didn't stock the vaccine and I had to go to the nearest city hours away etc., I then tried another A&E who wouldn't then gave up. One local department of something also phoned me, possibly agriculture? And most people treated it as mildly hilarious, something that annoys me even now, a few years later.

Have you been off garlic since this incident somehow?

@tulips27 thats very frustrating and Im not surprised you still feel annoyed, I would too. I think the guy who was scratched by a cat in Turkey and died had a similar experience to the one you describe. He wasn't taken seriously and was seen by the nurse and he phoned up and made several attempts to get help from his GP, the worse think was if im remembering correctly, he could still have been helped even several weeks after the scratch when it was infected and before other symptoms appeared. But no one prescribed the vaccine.

@Hobele ha ha yes! I need to keep all curtains closed as well! There was an issue with bats coming in through the beams, at one point we would find 5/6 a fortnight in the house. I would be sitting reading in bed and one would suddenly start Flying around my room, or I would walk past the sofa and spot one sitting on the armrest. My mum found a dead one in a pocket of a coat. My worst fear was being out opening my handbag and one flying out. There are literally thousands that roost around here in the house and trees.

OP I'm an ecologist and handle bats fairly frequently. the last case of rabies from a bat was back in 2012 and extremely rare. there have only ever been 5 cases of human rabies since 2000 - 2017.

Chill out 😊

Yes but they be fair how many people have been flown into by bats? Yes it’s a tiny chance buts it’s rabies, I wouldn’t mess about with it even if the chance was tiny - OP you’ve got nothing to lose by insisting on some pre emptive treatment, even the NHS website says to do this!

@hedgehogscrossing What kind of house do you live in? That'd terrify me, too. My cats - on the other hand - would never be bored. 😃

@Hobele it used to be a mill, so the end where the wheel used to be seems to have the most bats under the eves? Spelling?! But eves on the outside I mean. The gaps in the inside beams abound the windows have been blocked up in their hibernation Season, so winter, and touch wood that seems to have stopped them. Apart from the odd confused one that flies in an open door/window pretty rarely.

I'm assuming you've been vaccinated. With the best will in the world, you're not a HCP. OP has done the right thing and sought advice from specialists. 'Extremely rare' isn't 'never'.

Get the rabies shot anyway, you'll have to pay privet but it needs to be taken within 48 hours or its useless and if you where infected its fatal.

While Lyssa virus is really rare in humans (only 1 moden case of it transfering to humans in the UK and that was a bat researcher) but its not really worth taking any risk incase you are that really unlucky 1.

pre-emptive rabies vaccine doesnt stop rabies it only buys people a few days more to seek treatment, usually used if someone is in a remote location with limited medical access.

We stayed on top a mountain in africa for 2 weeks and was suggested it but could get to the main city hospital in just a few hours drive, no bad weather forcast to effect the roads and we weren't hiking wild where we could get lost so it seemed unnessacery.

I think rabies is a very low risk, OP, but it would be as well to get it checked out
Indeed. If you have rabies, and it's dealt with very early, you have every chance to get proper treatment and be ok. If you wait for symptoms, it is likely to be too late and nothing can be done.

There was a programme recently about two kids in the usa who'd been in very brief contact with a bat and became very ill. One miraculously survived but the other die.

I wouldn't take any chances. Sadly, although very rare, rabies is found in the UK.

Quick update! I'm off to The Hospital for Tropical Diseases tomorrow for my first rabies vaccine. Hopefully that will be in good time. They spoke to an expert who said it was a small risk but not worth taking a chance with rabies.

Thanks so much for everybody's advice. Moral of the story, don't accept being fobbed off by 111.

Glad you’re getting it seen to OP. Must have been quite the shock!

Just leaving this photo here for any of the other old timers…

Rabies prophylaxis is not horrendous and hasn’t been for a very long time.
My 3 year old DC had it after being bit by a monkey in Africa.
Three or four, I think but a long time ago, normal type of injections which really didn’t bother him much.