Bat flew into my hair, AIBU to seek further advice?

[SameOldMe]

Sitting in the garden and i bet flew into my head, no obvious marks or bites but terrified me ! Called 111 and they said as no scratches or bites just wait and see. It flew into my hair and in the panic i have no idea if it made contact or not. AIBU to call back and ask for a second opinion? Appreciate this if the second bat post in the last few days.

That's so sad. I wonder why the hospital waited so long to change their diagnosis from herpes to rabies and treat rabies, given they knew he had been in contact with a bat?

I may have missed it in the article but it doesn’t seem to state if the parents mentioned the bat on their first visit to a medical facility? If they didn’t it would be quite a leap to diagnose rabies seeing as it’s very rare. It’s possible that over the days/weeks as his symptoms worsened that’s when a doctor asked about animal exposure/bites and the parents suddenly went oh yeah he had a bat on his face one night.
Thing is in all honesty once he presented at a medical facility with symptoms he was pretty much guaranteed death so treatment was never going to help anyway unfortunately. He needed to be vaccinated the day of/after the bat incident. That would be the only way for him to have survived it.

You can’t treat rabies. When you start experiencing symptoms, you’re already dead.

Parent’s should have called as soon as there was potential exposure, for a preventative course of treatment.

Hang on. So the official Mumsnet line is to not go to A&E but to stay home and put her feet up? Beggars belief.

This Yahoo article seems to suggest that the hospital were told about the contact with the bat but still went with herpes.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/canadian-boy-11-died-rabies-150826036.html?guccounter=1

Three days later, he was brought to a city hospital emergency department in Ontario with painful swallowing and vomiting.

A physical exam found ulcers in his gums and a mild impairment in a nerve on the right side of the face that provides sensation and controls chewing.

The boy's family told the doctors about the incident with the bat and, the next day, the emergency doctor notified the local public health authority.
However, the hospital discharged the child on a presumed diagnosis of herpes gingivostomatitis, which is sores in the lips or mouth caused by herpes.

Thing is in all honesty once he presented at a medical facility with symptoms he was pretty much guaranteed death so treatment was never going to help anyway unfortunately. He needed to be vaccinated the day of/after the bat incident. That would be the only way for him to have survived it.

I have read this too but I think you would still want the hospital to diagnose him properly. Rabies mortality rate is not 100%, albeit it's a very high percentage.

@HebeMumsnet literally says 'What we will say is that we can't confirm that anyone else posting here is an expert either, so if you have a health concern we'd always suggest you seek professional advice, and perhaps a second opinion if you're still worried.'

The advice to the OP to put her feet up is because the OP has already sought medical assistance!

But she had got the wrong advice. Now, because everyone on here has told her she’s got the right advice and the rabies team are involved. But when this was posted last night the last thing she should have been told is to put her feet up and relax

In case it helps, my DD was flown into by a bat last month. We live in the US, so there is a higher rabies risk here.

We took her to A and E for the rabies protocol.

They gave her an amount of immunoglobulin on the first visit that was calculated against her weight, for her it ended up being 5 injections. So one in each leg, one in each arm. A break of a couple of minutes and then a second in one arm. This visit was set as day zero

She then had to go back to A and E for vaccinations on day 3, day 7 and day 14. All of these were just one injection each.

There was no sign of a bite, but the advice here is if a bat makes contact with uncovered skin, or thin clothing, you vaccinate whether there is any sign of a bit or scratch or not. Bats teeth are very tiny and bites can be undetectable to the eye.

Of course she should seek help rabies is extremely dangerous. I didn’t say not to vaccinate. I said I could see why she was worried. I was trying to ease her worries.

Any news yet @SameOldMe Anything further to report? Are you OK?

The story about the 11 year old is awful, how terrifying for them all.

Well, I hope you get the call back from the rabies team swiftly @SameOldMe

I've learnt something today. Whilst I did know that bats in the UK could carry and transmit rabies, I didn't know that, since their teeth and claws are so small, one might not be able to tell if one had been bitten or scratched.

I guess I grew up on a diet of Hollywood/Hammer Horror vampire bats, with big bitey teeth and lots of blood 😂

Thank you, everyone who posted links and info.

Hope all goes well @SameOldMe

Thanks for this! My husband woke to a bat flying over his face( he felt it) when we were in Maine( Kennebunk no less) on holiday 7 years ago. We had no idea of the risk re rabies and I do think it needs to be made more widely known to visitors. Presuming he’s ok 7 years on (as I see it can incubate)from what I’ve read after falling down a rabbit hole we should have taken him to be seen.

No rabies technically isn’t 100% fatal but considering it infects over 50000 people a year and only 20-30 people (numbers vary online) have EVER survived it means it’s pretty much 100%. 99.99999% is still pretty much certain death.

That article does state that the parents mentioned the bat on their visit to hospital after he’d already been diagnosed with herpes at the urgent care centres few days before. So that was the second visit to a medical centre. Yes at that point it should have been considered. But it seems that it was only the day after the visit they mentioned it that it was considered and he was officially diagnosed 4 days later. He had been in hospital for those 4 days so he would have been having treatment for what symptoms they could attempt to treat. There is no official or effective treatment for rabies.

We were told that symptoms can start anywhere from a few hours to one year after being infected. So seven years later I am guessing he is safe!

It such a scary disease. DD was hit while cycling home after dark down a country road. Im just glad she thought to tell us and we worked out that it was most likely a bat, so could get prophylactic treatment

What you’re missing is that there are two elements to risk assessment, with only one being likelihood - the other is severity of outcome, which in this case would be well-nigh 100% chance of a really horrible death if the bat did carry the virus.

In any case, your figures are straightforwardly wrong. The chance of a bat being near me right now and crashing into me is tiny. But the OP has already had a bat tangle in her hair, so you have to take this event out of the calculation, as retrospectively its likelihood is 100%. That leaves the likelihood of the OP’s bat being infected with the virus - this is likely to be a bit higher than your quoted 0.5%, just by virtue of its behaviour/poor flying. The fact that it did tangle in her hair again raises the risk of transmission- it’s a contact situation in which the bat was stressed and partially trapped and may well have scratched slightly in a manner which is impossible to see.This is why the NHS rates this situation as an amber-level exposure requiring vaccination.

Don’t misuse statistics. Poker doesn’t help you here. It’s all very well to potentially risk your own life, but a fairly low-level understanding of statistics isn’t a good basis on which to advise someone else in a situation like this.

So do tell us, just why does NHS protocol rate this an an amber-level exposure requiring prophylactic vaccination?

So rabies team have called and do in fact need the vaccine as a precaution as contact made . Earliest they can deliver the vaccine is tomorrow am and they confirmed it’s okay to start tomorrow. The vaccine is not stocked at A&E it has to be couriered in.

I am glad you are getting the treatment you need. I hope it isn't too painful. Will you make a complaint about the 111 call handler?

Absolutely - it was terrible advice

I'm glad that things are now under control and you're getting the vaccinations.

Hopefully all those who thought you were wrong/overreacting will now accept that a specialist rabies team actually know their stuff.

I'm generally not health anxious at all, but having travelled widely and been bitten by a dog in a high-risk area, I'm not about to underestimate how bad the consequences can be. The low odds of being infected, are no reason not to seek expert advice, when it comes to rabies.

I had a bat get caught in my hair too when I was cycling along a cycle path at night. Scared the crap out of me. I cycled home stiff as a board in case it was still in my hair.
I had no idea rabies was a thing in the UK, so I never sought advice.

I hope the vaccine goes ok, and your mind is at rest.

Absolutely. As an aside down my rabbit hole I discovered you should get vaccinated if you discover you’ve shared your sleeping space with a bat. Note to self - don’t book the cheapest accommodation in an older, historic property with high ceilings situated on 44 acres of heavily wooded, riverside grounds which is a natural habitat for bats -however lovely the town is!

Glad you’re getting sorted op.

That’s good, from this I take it over 24 hours later is ok