I've never had rabies shots, but it brings up another story. When my parents were at the Humane Society looking at cats when the cat my dad was holding bit him in the chin. As expected they put the cat back in its cage. About 2 weeks later, he gets a cute little post card in the mail saying that the cat was rabies free. I'm no doctor, but isn't that a little late to find out that the cat who bit him is rabies free???

At first you will feel like you have a really bad flu, then you die. I'm paraphrasing of course.

What is rabies?
Rabies is a disease caused by a virus that can affect the nervous system (brain and spinal cord) of any kind of mammal, including humans.

Animals that are infected with rabies can spread the disease through their saliva or brain matter. People may be exposed to rabies when bitten by an infected wild or domestic animal. People in the United States rarely get rabies because of widespread animal vaccination programs; rabies is more common in developing nations.

What are the symptoms of rabies?
Signs of rabies in animals may include having excessive saliva or sometimes foaming at the mouth, paralysis, or behavioral changes in your pet (shyness when the pet was friendly) or no fear of humans in a wild animal.

Rabies infection in humans begins with vague symptoms such as fever, cough, or sore throat followed in several days by more serious and rapidly progressing symptoms such as restlessness, hallucinations, and seizures. The final stage is coma and death.

Can rabies be treated?
Once rabies symptoms appear, the disease progresses rapidly, and there is no cure. If medical treatment to prevent rabies is provided before symptoms develop, the virus almost always is eliminated before it can cause serious damage. Medical treatment to prevent rabies includes:

Thorough cleansing of the area of exposure (bite, scratch, or open sore).
Vaccinations.
Any animal bite or area of exposure should be washed with soap and water immediately. Visit a health professional to see if additional care is needed. Your doctor and local health department can help determine your risk of exposure to rabies. Rabies vaccinations will be administered promptly if the risk of exposure to the virus is high.

How is rabies spread?
In the United States, the rabies virus is found almost exclusively in wildlife. Bats, raccoons, skunks, foxes, and coyotes are the most common hosts of rabies. The animals most likely to be affected can vary by region, although bats are becoming a primary source of infection among humans in many areas of the U.S.1 Report all animal bites, especially those from wildlife, to your local health department, and they can tell you which species pose a threat for rabies in your area. This will help determine the need for preventive treatment.

Occasionally, the rabies virus can spread to pets, such as dogs, cats, and domestic ferrets. However, household pets rarely get rabies, due to successful vaccination programs. A pet that always stays indoors is extremely unlikely to be exposed to the virus.

In extremely rare situations, a person can get rabies without being bitten by a rabid animal. Humans have acquired rabies without being bitten (nonbite exposure) by:

Exposure to rabid animal saliva or brain matter that comes in contact with open wounds, scratches, or mucous membranes, such as an eye or open mouth.
Breathing airborne virus, which may occur very rarely in places where the virus exists in high quantities, such as a cave filled with bats.
Human-to-human transmission through surgery. There have been rare cases where a person developed rabies after receiving a transplanted cornea from a donor who was unknowingly infected with rabies.
Your risk for developing rabies depends on how you were bitten. If the bite went directly into your skin, your risk is higher than if you were bitten through your clothing. A bite on your face puts you at higher risk than if you were bitten on the arms or legs. Your risk also increases if you were bitten more than once.

In what countries does rabies occur?
Rabies occurs in all areas throughout the United States except Hawaii. Only 42 people died from rabies in the United States between 1980 and 2000, and 13 of these people contracted rabies while in other countries.2 However, rabies is more common in developing nations such as those of the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where it is transmitted to humans primarily through dog bites.3

Rabies occurs in most regions of the world, except Antarctica and some island nations, such as Japan and England.1

You did the right thing getting the rabies shots. I would have done the same. Many people don't bother vaccinating their cats for some reason. I don't know where you live, but in the northeast US, rabies is endemic now. In fact, something like 90% of our raccoon population in Massachusetts died off a few years ago because of rabies.

These three people were not so lucky.

That was good information. I read it also. The "animal bite coordinator" here where we live said that her concern was that "there have been two rabies-positive raccoons come out of our neighborhood" and that since the cat seemed to a little more than normally aggressive, she wanted me to proceed with rabies shots.

Remember those days when you had to get 23 injections in the stomach? Well, you no longer have to do that now. You still have to get a series of shots, but to be honest, they don't hurt at all. They give them to you in your hips where the muscle layer is thickest. I've had a slight fever off and on but no other side effects from the shots. I was reading somewhere that most of the rabies cases that occur in the United States come from bats and that most people do not even realize that they were scratched or bitten by a bat and therefore they do not seek any medical intervention.

This is a good link about all of the recent human cases of rabies in the U.S.

Rabies is one God-awful thing that, fortunately, can be treated half-assed easily. Keep in mind, without treatment, rabies is 100% fatal. for comparison, Elboa and Marburg are around 70 to 80% fatal without treatment.

Scary stuff. getting the shots was REALLY smart.

Ouch. The human pincushion does not sound appealing - but more so than rabies.

I had rabies shots before visitng South America last year.

They went well, but the third shot made me ill for a few days afterwards. Apparently some patients can have a reaction to the alien culture being itroduced to the blood stream.

I would rather have the shots and be safe, than risk being infected. Rabies isn't pleasant by all accounts!

C

That was very smart of you to do because South America has so many bats.



I have had a bit of a fever but better a fever than death.