I need to be told I'm being ridiculous. Rabies/ bats?

[Anxiouspotat0]

Hi.
So, I go abroad on friday for two weeks.
Yesterday I woke with a weird.mark on my hand. I google lensed it to be told it looks like a bat bite. I measured it and it is the right size. IGoogle of course recommended a full course of post rabies exposure vaccines as bats arre the only.animal in the UK that cam carry a rabies like virus.

Here's the thing. I walk the dogs of an evening. There are sometimes bats around flying overhead but I.am confident I would have noticed one stopping to land on my hand (apparently they don't bite mid flight and have to anchor theirselves). It's the hand I hold the dog lead with. To my knowledge (I am confident) one never got anywhere near close. Which leaves one flying in through a window and biting me in my sleep (google says you'd always find a bat in the room, there is 0 evidence of any bat) I also have dogs that bark if a spider farts so if a bat was in tbe room surely they' have woke me up.

I'm waiting for the GP to get back to me (111 told me to send them a photo) .Obviously rabies is 100% fatal and not something to mess with. BUT if I do the jabs which are 4 jabs over 28 days, I will have to either not go away (it is incredibly important to me, it isnt a regular.holiday and I can't reschedule it) or source 1/2 jabs in the US which insurance would not cover. Tens of tbousands of debt which I cannot afford. All on the slight chance a bat somehow entered my home, bit me, and left with0 trace, and when only 0.5% of tested bats even carry the virus even if it was a bat bite.

I don't even know if the NHS would recommend thr jabs given I was never directly near a bat or found a bat in a room, but I'm just stressed as hell, please be gentle. But I'm hoping to be told that you regular unanxious people would just assume a spider bite or anything else and go about their lives without worrying about rabies. I am a super anxious person as you can surely tell.

Thanks if you made it this far.

I’ll say upfront I’m not a bat expert. But I am a reasonably intelligent neutral observer. Everything I know about the world and I’ve read on this thread tells me it’s just as likely that I have been bitten by a bat and didn’t notice than you have and that’s a bat bite. If that’s any reassurance.

I can understand the worry. I’m an anxious person myself. But lack of vampire bats in the uk, the fact you didn’t notice anything happening or have any interaction with or evidence of a bat (apart from then flying around when you walk your dog), and the very different experience of someone who has actually been bitten by a bat all lead me to this conclusion.

Hope you can find some reassurance and go on your trip.

You have not been bitten by a bat.
A bat has not been in your house, as you would 100% know about it. A bat has not bitten you while you were walking the dog, as to bite in that location you'd know about it.

Even if you had been bitten - which you have not - less than 1% of bats carry the viruses, and that's dependant on your location and the species of bats in that area.

Dr Google is not your friend! If you look hard enough it’ll also tell you it’s a brain tumour or Ebola … speak to the GP but I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about

Son recently had this . NHS gave the course of post exposure jabs. They told us that currently the local hospital are seeing 3 potential bat bites a week and blaming the v hot weather. Just get the jabs as a precaution, there are no side effects.

it looks like a slight pitting of the skin, like you can sometimes get on your nails? Maybe pitting oedema? Complete guess - I have no idea and I am not a doctor 😅 If you are in the uk I would be far less worried about bats and rabies. I thought you were abroad at the moment. Wait and see what the gp says but really don’t panic! You could show a pharmacist if there is one nearby.

I would have to either not go on holiday or spend £10k in the US , which I would do if I was confident a bat bit me, but I do not think one was anywhere near me at any point. Can I see your sons?
Was he around any bats?

If you’re an anxious person then never google things you’re worried about. It will always send you into a spiral.
I can’t see a puncture wound.
You didn’t see any bats.
You didn’t feel a bite.
If you’re in the U.K. we don’t have rabies here.
Are you having treatment for your anxiety?

We do have rabies just not the classicaltype if you google, only in bats. But yes I am anxious as a human :)

I can only say that when a bat flew into our house in France in the night it woke me up. I was asleep in the bedroom with the door and window closed and this bat was flying around the lounge and bedroom corridor. Just the sound of it (quite quiet) flapping inside woke me and I went out of the room to check what it was. Hence I saw the bat flying. Went back to bed with door firmly closed and bat had gone by morning. (We had a vent in the old kitchen ceiling open at the time - presume it came in and out via that).

I am quite aware of bats in France due to the rabies risk and usually have either shutters or windows closed at night.

Stop googling.
So you’re not having any treatment? You need to speak to your GP about this.

My sons wound looked like yours but did swell and was painful. There had been a bat in the room he slept in but he did not notice it bite .

Not the best pic.

Ok ignore my last post if you are super anxious and stop googling, see what the go says!

Was there any red/ blood like appearance on tbe actual marks? And what part of the body

No swelling or pain here so far, noticed yesterday morning. This worries me but I also guess they treated him preventarively as he knows there was a bat. I have no evidence of one being around me..

To add to this - although you have not been bitten, and do not require treatment...

If you were to have treatment, you'd be getting the expensive part here (the HRIG) the rest of the treatment plan if just the vaccine and boosters, which is significantly cheaper. Even in the USA you're looking at hundreds rather than thousands of dollars.

But you haven't been bitten, so it's immaterial.

We do have Lyssavirus in a very small number of bats in the UK which is a rabies-type virus. So it’s from the same type of virus that does cause rabies. I believe it is just as fatal as classic rabies but I’m not 100% sure.

Thats not a bat bite nor does it look like its punctured the skin

Let the doctor look at it and decide, OP. I have woken to a bat and it was silent when flying around. My dogs weren't barking and they normally would. I was advised that bats are good at avoiding objects and they are not going to fly into me. They have good sonar. I wouldn't worry too much, that doesn't even look punctured, but get the doctor to have a look. Obviously if he thinks you need a course of treatment it trumps your going away.

A rabid bat would bite. A non-rabid bat wouldn't. (Unless she was standing still outside in a country with vampire bats.)
I am 100% certain the OP would have noticed if a bat had bitten her. They flap around a lot and it would be highly alarming.

I thought this too, I would need day 7 there (maybe day 3 if I didnt get day 0 today) but apparently you have to go ER for tbe jabs therre which automatically adds thousands per visit as nowhere stocks them.:/

Have name changed for this as highly identifying if anyone knows me in real life.
@Anxiouspotat0- DS was bitten by a bat a few years ago on his arm and thumb, on a Sunday. Initially A&E more or less laughed at me and sent us home. About 45 minutes later they were on the phone apologising and asking me to bring him back in. They organised the 4 injections to begin the next morning and he was fine.
We have bats all around us - we live in woodland - he was not bitten at home but in an underpass he was cycling through.
Our cat often brings them into the house during the night - I don’t know whether they are still alive at that point or whether he catches them outside and brings them in or catches them inside (we sleep with all the windows open in the summer) but we never know until we find a dead bat wherever the cat has left it. The cat has never caught rabies!
Equally none of us have ever been bitten in our sleep (that we are aware of.)
A&E at the time told us that in the area we live (East Anglia) there were no recorded bats with rabies - I think they said that year it had only been found in Somerset and Devon.

Anyway, the point of my post is that I don’t think you’ll ever know for sure if that is a bat bite - and if it is the chances of that bat carrying rabies is probably quite low, it may be worth trying to find out where any rabies carrying bats have been found in the U.K. this year, I have no idea how you would find out though as it was the nhs that advised me.
Good luck and I really hope you get to go on your holiday

Talk to your GP.

To put things into perspective, there has been one case in the UK of transmission of a rabies-like virus from bats to humans in the last 100 years, and the last indigenous transmission of actual rabies was in 1922.

But I'm like you and would take no chances, so see what your doctor thinks.

I wonder if something has come loose on your dog lead and gone into your hand it almost looks like the mark of a buckle.

Sorry to hear about your ds :( I assune he felt the bites? Did they leave markd?

@Anxiouspotat0 he did feel the bat as he collided with it and put his hand up - he said he felt something and there was a mark. I’ll see if I can find a picture of it to post