AIBU to worry after a possible bat hit my forehead?

[OneQuickCoralQuoter]

Hi all, this evening I decided to go for a walk as I’m struggling with my MH and anxiety - namely health anxiety. I was walking down a quiet street past a hedge when I felt something impact the side of my forehead. I was confused and thought something had been thrown at me but it appeared something flew off past me very quickly. I didn’t see what it was but due to the time I’m going to guess it was a bat.

My skin has no bleeding or wounds and I don’t think I was bitten or scratched by it.

However, I’m now completely beside myself. Google is telling me to call 111 for rabies advice but I text a few family members about it who seem to think it’s just funny and this is an over reaction, and my partner thinks the same.

i have extreme health anxiety so this is just a complete nightmare to me.

AIBU to panic over this?

Look up the ways rabies can be transferred.

None of them have happened to you.

Brief akin to skin contact with a bat, even a rabid one, will not transfer rabies. I assume no part of the bathroom entered your oral, ocular or nasal cavities.

Please don't waste your own or NHS time on this. If you decide to make an appointment, make one for health anxiety. I wish you all the best in getting that sorted - I know it's horrible and can be really hard to deal with.

But she didn’t see a bat. It could have been a leaf. It would be farcical to seek treatment. Imagine this: I was out for a walk and something brushed my face so I am going to
presume it was a bat (statistically unlikely) and also assume it has transmitted rabies (statistically even less unlikely). What injury or symptoms can the doctor inspect? On that basis and info, no doctor could prescribe any medication to treat an injury by an animal that was unseen and is unevidenced.

I do feel that the age of the internet and increasingly emotionally labile medical advice (often designed to prevent litigation rather than illness) has broken our ability to see and assess risk. A parent of a child I teach took them to an and e because they had bumped their head and got an egg swelling and bruise. YES head knocks can cause brain injury and YES that can be fatal but children get head bumps all the time and do not have concussion. The child was fine. The parent continually panics. The child is nervous and anxious. This kind of crazy extrapolation is a dangerous trend for children and is affecting their ability to mature and grow up normally.

Considering that the test involves euthanising the animal, cutting its head off and sending the head for testing you may understand why they don’t test them for rabies.

This. I had my windows open in the very hot weather and had bats come in a few times during the night. They flapped around, never bumping into anything, and were gone by morning.

There are quite a few bats where I live and I quite often go out at dusk with my cat and we watch them flying around. They are really amazing how they fly at such speeds without bumping into anything.

A friend of mine was bitten by a bat - she’s a vet nurse and was handling an injured one which bit through her gloves. She did have to go to hospital and get vaccinated against rabies after being assessed by the UKHSA.

am i really the only one left who remembers this ?!? 😫

A head bump has zero to do with bats. Nothing. It is a completely different scenario.

I remember the bat! 😁. I saw a jellycat bat in a shop yesterday which reminded me of the MN bat.

Bats are protected in the U.K. so if you have them in your loft and flying around outside you can’t get rid of them -can’t believe this is the case if there was a likelihood of rabies

Incorrect info. If you get symptoms of rabies you will die. It is too late to do anything.

In the US you are advised to get treatment if you discover you’ve shared your sleeping space with a bat. For good reason. You often won’t be able to tell if you’ve been bitten.

What is with all the weird bat threads lately?!

Its a wonderful it hasn't made the news all these crazed bats there is heaps on threads on them

i wish people would stop wasting NHS money - this is ridiculous

I completely get anyone having health anxiety over rabies as it’s a pretty terrifying illness. It’s massively unlikely the OP has been scratched or got bat saliva on her face from an infected bat but given the consequences if that is what happened then it doesn’t seem unreasonable to call 111 or the GP and follow their advice.

Was it wearing a kimono?

Maybe the USA has a bigger rabies problem with bats?

I live on that side of the pond and thought there were several "rabies" incidents every year, though not all from bats.
IIRC, most rabies deaths in the USA have been because of bats. Thank goodness for window screens!

We get bats in our garden every night and I've never seen them bump into anything, sometimes they fly quite low but never hit us.
I did have a bat shit on me at Chester Zoo in the walk through thing they had 😂😂

Your single solution to all bat-in-my-hair problems:

Apologies if this has already been mentioned (I've not read all the replies), but if it helps you feel any better...
The last recorded case of bat to human rabies in the UK was in 2002, and the man was a licensed bat handler.

I lived in a house with so many bats in the garden the bat preservation society ( or something similar) used to come and do surveys. Generally bats swerve you. They probably have a bat MN forum about how often they think they may have hit a human and what should they do. However if it's going to really worry you see if you can chat to your GP. As pp have said if there's no scratch or mark I don't think you have anything to worry about but double check for reassurance.

If your skin isn't broken then you are fine. The skin is an amazingly effective barrier. You are no more at risk than if your leg got a bit splashed by a muddy puddle - your forehead skin is no less effective a barrier than your leg skin, and there are no more germs on the exterior of a bat than in a spatter of mud. As soon as you've had a wash, any germs are gone.

Statistically, you are vanishingly unlikely to be at risk.

Apparently 0.3% of bats carry lyssavirus. So that is a 1/300 chance of a bat being infected.

You don’t even know if it was a bat, so let’s call it 10% chance of actually being a bat.

You don’t think you were bitten and there are no marks. So maybe 1/1000 chance of tiny hidden puncture.

Not sure what odds would be of getting rabies if it is a minuscule puncture wound. I am guessing low but I don’t know.

So, it is at least a 1 in a million chance that you could get rabies from your encounter.

Also the last bat case in the uk was 2002, the previous one was 100 years earlier. Personally, I would just ignore it and forget about it.

I’m in the UK and am not remotely concerned.

My cat actually caught a bat and brought it in once, I was amazed, how on earth did he manage that ! He is very strong and has huge back legs so I sort of imagine him leaping into the air ! I didn’t think about rabies but he’s fine !