Rabies

[HuckleberryBlackcurrant]

We found a bat in our spare room today. We live in the US. It is currently triple bagged in our refrigerator waiting to be sent to the health authority for analysis for rabies. We won't know if the bat is rabid until Wednesday. We are terrified. We have no idea when or how it got in. We have 2 kids and I am 37 weeks pregnant.

Apparently rabies vaccinations can cost thousands of dollars which we really can't afford right now .

If you believe in the power of prayer please send one up for us. We are very very scared.

This is extremely worrying and I’m sorry this happened to you OP. I’m also sorry so many posters are so uninformed!

I think after a bite you wouldn’t get the vaccine but rather immunoglobulin, which is more involved. You can’t get that at Walgreens! It is done in hospital.

My toddler was bitten by a vaccinated dog a few years ago. (The wound was a puncture wound on her hand.) We took her to an outpatient clinic. I had to give the address of the dog’s owner. The dog had to be quarantined for 10 days and on the tenth day someone from the county went to physically examine the dog. Apparently if there are no rabies symptoms by then it’s safe to assume the dog would not have been contagious at the time of the bite.

Again, the dog had all its rabies vaccinations but no vaccine is 100% and there are literally no second chances with rabies.

I suppose I’m just telling this so people understand how seriously we have to take rabies in the States.

@Teapot13 General protocol is immunoglobulin and then 4 doses of the vaccine spread out over a few weeks to a month. It varies slightly on country and immunisation status. The immunoglobulin is the really expensive part and in the US the prices are jacked up. In the UK if you were paying cost I think the whole protocol is about £1000 but free on the NHS, in the USA it can be 10x that, and even with insurance you may have to pay the copay which could be a few 1000. Hopefully the OPs insurance won't be too bad.

More for general info than at @Teapot13 who clearly went through a different process.

I live in country where we have don't have rabies, but we do have Lyssavirus. Since 1996 - when Lyssavirus was identified in the country - all people diagnosed with Lyssavirus have died. A government-issued factsheet blandly states this about threatment options:

How is it treated?
There is no available treatment for rabies or ABLV once symptoms have started.

Oh.

You need to be vaccinated before exposure. Here, that's recommended for anyone who might work with or be in close contact with bats. I live in an area with high bat activity (they fly over every night and roost nearby during the day) but I'm not planning on handling them.

Good luck OP! You've done all the right things.

I still can't quite believe the number of 'I've seen bats they don't approach or attack' type comments. Clearly missed the point that rabid animals don't behave like healthy ones (amongst many other good points being ignored.)

I don’t know why some posters can’t get their heads around this being in the US and not the UK. And rabies being a real thing! I was in a country with a high risk of rabies once and a very cute stray kitten pawed my foot. It didn’t break the skin luckily but I was pretty terrified, regardless of how cute it was. I imagine how scared you must be op especially when it involves your family and the unknown. Hopefully the results will be back today.

Some of the replies on this thread are ridiculous. I'm surprised no one has suggested setting up a GoFundMe for the bats family yet.

I think people (in this country) don't realise just how serious rabies is. There's no waiting and seeing if you get it. If you do, you're dead from the first symptom. I have an anti vax friend who travels a lot. I once asked her if she'd get her/her son a rabies vaccine if needed. She went off to Google. She then agreed that is one she would definitely get if there was even a chance of exposure. Even hard core antivaxxers understand the seriousness of it if they look into it. Rabies is not a virus to be messed with. You don't take chances. Ever.

I live in a country where cases of Rabies have been recorded. Mostly among the Bedouin in the Desert. Recently though I was scratched by a stray kitten I was trying to catch in order to have it spayed and vaccinated against rabies (amongst other things) before releasing it again to the wild. I had to have a tetanus jab, a course of antibiotics and I was only 10 minutes away from having the rabies protocol when the center for disease control decided my scratch didn’t warrant the protocol - they could tell by the scratch despite scratches being mentioned in the literature. I had an ok kind of scratch. It was scary. Very scary. As for the kitten - well we went on to have the most wonderful 12 months together before she died from a very sudden illness. One minute she was there. The next she was gone. She was 14 months old.

I love bats, I love beavers, fish, donkeys, sheep all animals. But I love humans more. You are 100% not over reacting. If you catch rabies you are dead. no medical person is going to ride in on a white charger and save you. you are dead. I live in the UK. setting aside allergies, there are very few animals that are going to kill me. I dont have to be careful when out walking in fields and by streams. I dont have to worry about snakes and spiders in my house in the same way others in the world do. we just have no comprehension what this fear and worry is like. you are doing the right thing. fingers crossed for a good outcome for you.

This is probably part of the issue with the posters at the back who are commenting about the sweet cutee little batty~ watty.
UK is as far as flora and fauna go, about as 'Tame' as it gets.

I was shocked years ago when an Australian killed ''Browns'' {Snakes} when they were around her farmhouse.
I had no idea how venomous they were, and she was protecting her working dogs.
Australia is about as ''Hardcore gnarly'' as it gets with reptiles and animals one has to be careful of.

They don't have rabies, but they have lyssavirus {Lyssa= Rage}
An Australian boy was scratched by a bat in a ''Children's club'' area-
Hospital weren't sure what was wrong, initially.

The little boy{Below} didn't think to tell his Mum about the bat scratch {Bat randomly approached him to scratch}- but he told his sister.

Neither thought to tell their parents.

Lyssavirus is preventable IF treated before symptoms begin.

OP, you did entirely the right thing for where you are. Please don't feel you have to defend your actions. Not doing what you did would have been too big a gamble.

Please update us when you get the results.

Some of the posts on here make me very embarrassed to be British. I know we are very fortunate to live in a rabies free country, but how can anyone have got to adulthood with so little understanding of what a horrendous disease rabies is, and with no understanding of how it can be spread?

I do hope the test result is negative, OP, and you can stop worrying.

This. In spades

Thank you everyone who has been so kind. I am hoping we hear something by this afternoon.

I have been thinking about you all day. Good luck; I have everything crossed for you. As I said before, the stats really are on your side x

I know we are very fortunate to live in a rabies free country, but how can anyone have got to adulthood with so little understanding of what a horrendous disease rabies is, and with no understanding of how it can be spread?

This is just what I've been thinking, I can't believe the amount of posters who are complaining about killing the bat and the general lack of knowledge regarding rabies.

@HuckleberryBlackcurrant you've been on my mind today. Hoping you get good news and soon as I know it must be so stressful waiting for the results.

I do apologize for my comment. I mustn’t have read your post properly. No excuse. I really hope the tests come back negative. You did the right thing. Keeping my fingers crossed for you and your family x

Kudos to Tilly

@AxolotlOnions

When they rush the testing, which they are doing in this circumstance, I was told to expect to hear back within 24-48 hrs of the lab receiving the bat. I dropped it off at 9am yesterday....we are 3 hrs away from the lab so not sure when they would have received it but hopefully soon.

@Tillyteacup

It's such a bizarre situation I can hardly believe it myself. Certainly very foreign to me as a Brit. I have lived here for 8 yrs and never encountered anything like this, apart from exercising caution around strange animals.

A few years ago we did have a stray cat that bit and scratched me, we kept it in an outbuilding (of course, we fed and watered it) to observe for rabies and thankfully all was well. Unfortunately I can't keep a bat around in quite the same way.

The cat went to a new home after the quarantine period!

I think the problem with mumsnet is there are a large number of people who live in a bubble of little England. There is also the need for some people to jump onto every thread they can just to be a dick and make an ever so witty comment. When you add this mix to people with limited education and no real understanding of anything outside their bubble you get threads like this.
It can be exhausting reading at times.

Or could it be that the OP was rather disingenuous to seek help about rabid bats on a UK forum where truly most people will not have encountered rabid bats before and she didn't even mention until later that she is not in the UK.

I realise that there has been an accomplished rabid bat expert posting on the thread, but I thought her post was pretty condescending in that she could not believe how many posters were uninformed about rabid bats. I am an accountant, I would not dream of posting about how I cannot believe how many people are uninformed about double entry book keeping.

Surely most people know about rabies it's basic knowledge, surely? I don't know anyone who isn't aware of it on a basic level, travel is widespread these days, and many people will have had to have obtained rabies vaccines or post exposure treatments after a bite in a rabies endemic country.

It's basic health awareness.

and she didn't even mention until later that she is not in the UK

Wat