r/nottheonion • u/He-Who-Reaches • 1d ago
Woman wakes up to bat trying to crawl into her mouth: 'I was screaming repeatedly'
https://www.kcra.com/article/woman-wakes-up-to-bat-trying-to-crawl-into-her-mouth-i-was-screaming-repeatedly/73553122743
u/Loki-L 1d ago
Entirely reasonable. I would be sreamimg and retching all the way to the doctor and beg them to to give me a rabies shot and whatever else in injection they had lying around.
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u/XxSoapxXHD 1d ago
Ive asked before and got mixed responses, if you caught the bat and it tested negative for rabies would you still need a shot?
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u/jellyn7 1d ago
Are you sure that was the only bat around? As in, you're sure that's the bat that crawled into your mouth and sure that's the bat you later caught. And that there were no other bats secretly biting you before you were awake.
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u/Loki-L 1d ago
Technically you might not need it, but am far more terrified of getting rabies than of getting an unnecessary rabies shot and would not wait until the results came back.
Trivia: As far as I know, if they want to test if an animal had rabies, they need to cut off his head and send that head to a lab in a box Gwyneth Paltrow style.
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u/mungobungo2221 1d ago
I would get the damn shot. The closer the bite is to your head and spine the less time you have to figure out if you might actually get rabies.
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u/skoomski 21h ago
Waking up with a bat in your bedroom is considered rabies exposure even if you don’t have signs of a bite because small bats have tiny needle sized bite marks
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u/artbystorms 1d ago
It's not just one shot. It's 4 shots over 2 weeks.
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u/cheshire_kat7 20h ago
I'd rather get 400 shots over 2 weeks than rabies.
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u/artbystorms 20h ago
Well of course, cause you'd die. Rabies is like 99% lethal once symptomatic. I'd get the shots if I was even in the same room as a bat and couldn't say for certain it didn't bite me.
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u/Minamato 19h ago
Like 99.999999% iirc there have been 3 documented cases of survival
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u/cheshire_kat7 19h ago
There have been a few dozen reported rabies survivors, most of whom were severely disabled afterwards. The Milwaukee Protocol fails far more often than it works and it has now pretty much been abandoned.
Rabies still kills more than 50,000 people annually worldwide.
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u/AdoringCHIN 16h ago
There were people from Amazon tribes that had rabies antibodies despite never having received the vaccine. The fatality rate is still damn close to 100% but maybe there's strains of it that are less deadly than others.
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u/Unique-Coffee5087 19h ago
She then called a friend, an infectious disease doctor, for advice on whether she needed a rabies vaccine.
"He was anxious, and he's not a very anxious person. So when he got anxious, I started to get anxious, and what I didn't fully realize at the time was that the closer to the brain the exposure, the markedly accelerated risk of transmission," Edelman said.
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u/Unique-Coffee5087 19h ago
The shots cost a lot, apparently. I wonder if insurance would deny it as "not medically necessary"
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u/mfb- 17h ago
As of 2018, the average estimated cost of rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) was US$ 108 (along with travel costs and loss of income)
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/rabies
It's probably more expensive in the US as usual, but given the potential life-saving effect...
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u/Unique-Coffee5087 17h ago
Per Google AI summary:
Without health insurance, a full course of rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) in the United States typically costs between $3,000 and $8,000, though total emergency room bills routinely reach $10,000 to $25,000+ due to hospital facility fees.
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u/CKT_Ken 16h ago edited 3h ago
US hospitals tend to administer extremely expensive and hard to store immunoglobulin due to liability issues which sends the price skyrocketing. They’ll have the shit sued out of them and be a news item for weeks if someone gets treatment late with no immunoglobulin and dies. Most exposures with a known timeframe don’t actually need it as evidenced by the cheap vaccines working in countries without access to the antibodies, and the fact that we had rabies vaccines before the immunoglobulin was isolated.
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u/Oer1 1d ago
Depends. Would you risk dieing to avoid potential redness and swelling at the injections site, and a mild headache?
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u/LumberBitch 1d ago
Idgaf if that bat tested negative I'm getting that shot. I have no desire to get rabies ever
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u/HistoricalSuspect580 1d ago
From a medical standpoint it doesn’t depend on anything, it would be indicated!
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u/raptosaurus 1d ago
The testing takes time to come back. If it was positive it might be too late
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u/graveybrains 1d ago
Especially since it was in her mouth, you get less time the closer to the brain the wound is.
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u/norunningwater 1d ago
Yes. Bats transfer rabies in their saliva from bat to bat, it could have acquired rabies from another bat and transferred it to a bite victim before it is multiplied in their body.
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u/Noof42 1d ago
I'd get a rabies shot without exposure to bats, if they'd let me.
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u/Santos_L_Halper_II 1d ago
Honestly I kind of feel like I need one after reading this article. Fuck.
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u/Santos_L_Halper_II 1d ago
1 - I wouldn't fuck with a false negative, no matter how low the chances of that are. Rabies is so horrible that belt and suspenders is the only thing to do.
2 - you can usually get your rabies shots much faster than you can get the animal tested. There's zero reason to wait on the result.
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u/BlueSwordM 1d ago
Bro, it's RABIES we're taking about.
Nobody should take a risk EVER if you find a bat in your mouth.
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u/ProkopiyKozlowski 21h ago edited 20h ago
Let's do a decision matrix.
The bat did not have rabies, you did not get vaccinated. Nothing happens.
The bat did not have rabies, you got vaccinated. Nothing happens, you're down some money.
The bat did have rabies, you did not get vaccinated. You die a slow horrible death with no possible treatment (Milwaukee Protocol has not been shown to be effective).
The bat did have rabies, you got vaccinated. Nothing happens, you're down some money.
If you get vaccinated you're guaranteed to not die a slow horrible death. If you don't, there is a 50% chance to die a slow horrible death.
Personally, I don't want to risk dying a slow horrible death so I'd get the shots regardless of the animal test results.
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u/ContingentMax 1d ago
Given rabies is fatal if not treated fast enough I'm getting that shot to be safe.
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u/t0getheralone 1d ago
Rabies is a slow virus but it's speed is based on distance from vitals and especially your nervous system. Being bit on the face you are quite likely to be given the shot right away instead of waiting for test results.
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u/tachycardicIVu 1d ago
Kinda depends but in my parents’ case 1) it took too long to get a response (my mom had to call multiple times for a positive/negative result) and 2) an opening was found in their home (patched now) which is how the bat got into the house - and there’s honestly no telling if that was the only one, so they both got a full regimen of shots to be safe. Especially because it took multiple times for animal control to capture the bat (it kept disappearing) it’s entirely possible there was more than one. I think it highly depends on the situation and context; the people handling this stuff are pretty good about analyzing the risk and deciding if it’s prudent to get shots anyways or if the risk is minimal.
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u/vibesandcrimes 1d ago
Testing for rabies is dcapitating the animal. Then sending it to a lab to wait in queue to be processed.
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u/satinsateensaltine 19h ago
Also for some versed to hopefully erase the last couple of hours from my memory.
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u/Unique-Coffee5087 19h ago
Best not to swallow the head that you bit off. The brain is needed for the rabies examination.
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u/ibraw 1d ago
Now get a rabies shot
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u/StaysAwakeAllWeek 1d ago
A bat near your mouth = rabies shot NOW and do not delay. That is DAYS away from reaching your brain and killing you
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u/LatrodectusGeometric 1d ago
Bat touching you = rabies shot
Bats are very agile and normal healthy bats fly near people all the time. If they touch you, that’s a reason to get evaluated
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u/Beautiful-Cup4161 17h ago
Bat found in your bedroom = also yes get a rabies shot for that too. Even if you don't think it touched you.
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u/LatrodectusGeometric 3h ago
It’s actually a bit more nuanced and you should be evaluated for PEP if you wake to a bat in your room. Most people interpret that as getting PEP automatically but it’s not always the case
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u/sphinxofblackquartzj 14h ago
It's because their bite is tiny and painless so the general advice is to assume you were bitten when it touched you.
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u/Zuliano1 1d ago
For real, I saw a similar headline months ago, but the man died as they didn't consider the rabies risk.
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u/JP76 1d ago
I think it was a child and he had a bat crawling on his face when he woke up. His parents didn't take him to doctor, because there weren't visible bite marks.
They took him after symptoms started, but with rabies that's too late.
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u/David_Cockatiel 21h ago
Rabies moves through saliva, no bite necessary. Unfortunately most people don’t know that.
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u/ChampionsWrath 1d ago
You saw a similar headline to this one??? Where are these people sleeping lol
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u/goat_penis_souffle 1d ago
This is 100% a situation where you should get rabies treatment if you can. None of this “a bat looked at me, gimme shots!!1!” bullshit you see when the topic comes up on Reddit.
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u/Illiad7342 1d ago
Eh I mean with how lethal and excruciating rabies is, I think an abundance of caution is practical
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u/LatrodectusGeometric 1d ago
Go check out r/rabies People can and do go overboard. People there are getting rabies treatment for:
seeing a bat outdoors
feeling a light brush at night that could have been a moth or imagination (no bat seen)
having a small puncture wound (no bats seen)
getting scratched by a healthy vaccinated pet dog while playing
One person has received more than a dozen rabies shots this year
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u/goat_penis_souffle 1d ago
That is…not a healthy compulsion. Rabies only freaked me out as a kid when you hear that the treatment back then was multiple injections into the abdomen. Funny how since the treatment became less torturous, these dipshits pop up out of the woodwork.
If they had the prospect of the old school “dozens of shots to the stomach” treatment dangled before them, that compulsion would clear right up.
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u/AdoringCHIN 16h ago
One person has received more than a dozen rabies shots this year
At that point the guy is probably sweating out the rabies vaccine. He should go hug some foxes, he'd probably immunize them.
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u/Ni_Peng_NeeeWom 1d ago
One person has received more than a dozen rabies shots this year
wtf, even if they're confirmed rabies carrying bats, do you actually need to get a shot after every time? isn't the whole point of immunity that it protects you forward-looking?
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u/LatrodectusGeometric 1d ago
No, no you don’t. That person has never actually been exposed but has severe health anxiety :(
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u/houseWithoutSpoons 1d ago
Got damn right.they are a spreader of rabies and i want none of that.all it takes is a scratch and she had one french kissing her
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u/HistoricalSuspect580 1d ago
shots. It’s alot of shots. YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD GET THEM. But, just to prepare yourself. It’s a lot of them.
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u/Solid-Version 22h ago
Question, why aren’t rabies shots just given to us routinely like other shots?
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u/fullload93 1d ago
A wild story. But a few things worked in her favor.
- She actually had the bat trapped and tested for rabies and it came back negative
- She’s a doctor so even if the bat couldn’t be caught/tested, I’m sure she wasn’t going to risk it and definitely would have the wherewithal and forethought to get the rabies vaccine.
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u/SpaceGoonie 1d ago
I saw this on the news last week. She got the rabies treatment before the bat was tested. I think that should be standard protocol, mostly because I don't know how fool proof the test is, and I would imagine it's possible for the results to be wrong, even if just from human error.
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u/fullload93 1d ago
In this case, especially since it was in her damn mouth, yeah, I don’t blame her for playing extra safe and getting it
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u/LatrodectusGeometric 1d ago
No one has ever gotten rabies after a negative test. It is default to start the shots for an exposure around the head or neck.
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u/cloistered_around 1d ago
So anyone a bat expert here? Why would a non rabies bat be trying to crawl into her mouth? (only dumb guess I can make is she sleeps with her mouth open and the bat was either trying to go for a bug or sensed moisture in there)
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u/sullensquirrel 20h ago
Imagine dreaming it was a mouse and then feeling like it’s a tulip and it’s a freaking BAT. I love bats, from a distance, but my god I’d never sleep again
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u/MattiasCrowe 1d ago
Has she tried screaming with her mouth closed, might solve future situations
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u/Fetlocks_Glistening 1d ago
Bruce Wayne has some explaining to do
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u/Dense-Bus-7194 1d ago
Why would Bruce Wayne have explaining to do? He’s just some rich billionaire
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u/Difficult_Team3079 22h ago
Yeah its that batman guy that has some explaining to do.
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u/sameth1 1d ago
That fun fact hoax about accidentally eating spiders in your sleep was wrong. It's actually bats that you accidentally eat 3 of per year in your sleep.
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u/a_lonely_trash_bag 23h ago
"average person eats 3 bats a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 bats per year. Bats Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
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u/SopwithTurtle 1d ago
From a rabies perspective, that's pretty horrifying - the virus is being injected pretty much right near the brain.
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u/Icedcoffeeee 21h ago
This is the biggest "hell no" from me.
She then called a friend, an infectious disease doctor, for advice on whether she needed a rabies vaccine.
"He was anxious, and he's not a very anxious person. So when he got anxious, I started to get anxious, and what I didn't fully realize at the time was that the closer to the brain the exposure, the markedly accelerated risk of transmission," Edelman said.
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u/TrailMomKat 1d ago
I had one fly into the side of my head a few weeks ago and get stuck in my hair.
Absolutely a valid reaction lol
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u/Chazkuangshi 1d ago
I can't imagine the bat was having a great time either with her screaming coming from all directions
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u/nhh 1d ago
Rabies shots now please
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u/LatrodectusGeometric 1d ago
She started the shots while the bat was being tested but it came back negative!
Just a crazy bat!
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u/batcave63 21h ago
The scary part is if a bat flies into your bedroom, bites you, then leaves and you never knew it was there....until the symptoms start.
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u/More_Hold_5522 1d ago
A neighbor has bats getting into her apartment all the time. They can't figure out how they are getting in.
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u/Particular_Ticket_20 1d ago edited 21h ago
Better than climbing out of your mouth, at which point you're thinking, "How long has that been in there and are there others?"
Then the obvious follow up question, "Have I developed a super power where I can shoot bats out of my mouth?"
And, "If I have developed that power, can I quit my job?"
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u/umlaut 22h ago
See, these three kids were cursed by a witch, turned into bats.
The first of them to successfully get fully inside this woman's mouth will be transformed back into a human. The rest will live a few more years as bats.
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u/cowlinator 16h ago
Kid/bat #3: "yep, that's what i told him. That the curse is lifted by crawling into her mouth."
Kid/bat #2: "that's just mean. By the way, how do we lift the curse?"
Kid/bat #3: "you know the wood-chipper out back?"
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u/rodhoosebaum 1d ago
Interesting. If this behavior is not confined to this one bat, we may have a third theory about where COVID came from.
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u/Barbarossa38 1d ago
A teenager in Canada recently woke up with a Bat on his face and then subsequently died of rabies even though he had no evidence that he had been bitten or scratched. Scary stuff
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u/ManicMakerStudios 1d ago
And why do we swallow bats, Bruce? So we can learn how to get tested for rabies.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Sea-528 20h ago
I had a freaking praying mantis try to fly into my mouth today!! I was on a business outing and ran screaming and nobody knew what happened, including myself until after I returned and my colleague informed me what fell on the ground. All I felt was a giant SMACK on my face and lips and I was out of there 😱
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u/Unique-Coffee5087 19h ago
Just for your entertainment, here's s story of a woman who fought an attacking rabid raccoon. Her son had to hit it with a tire iron for five minutes to kill it.
But the real horror was the runaround she got as she tried to get treated
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/319/and-the-call-was-coming-from-the-basement/act-one-16
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u/SideInitial3961 23h ago
You have to admit she looks part bat. Maybe like 1/4 on her mother's side.
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u/DimensioT 1d ago
It might have been Dracula, planning to return to human form once inside her mouth to make her explode.
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u/odd-god-monkey 1d ago
One time when I was a kid a baby bat crawled all the way up my leg from outside and I was like this is the coolest thing ever and I told my friend’s mom and she was like holy shit. Get that bat away from you.
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u/sleeskeaer 1d ago
imagine being the bat and finding out THAT's where the cave entrance leads
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u/dexterminate8 1d ago
Someone should organize a Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race for the Cure in her honor.
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u/zigaliciousone 1d ago
I am a grown ass man who handles stuff like spiders, snakes and other creepy crawlies with no problem. Also live between two bat nests who all pop out around sundown and sometimes fly to and from our patio to eat the bugs attracted to the light. Still scares the shit out of me when they get too close.
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u/SuperstitiousPigeon5 1d ago
Had one appear in my house magically this spring. Something was wrong with it because it flew into my sink and couldn’t climb out. I ended up catching it under a plastic butter container.
I was trying to get it outside but the story has a tragic ending because no matter how I tried to slide cardboard under it I couldn’t get it to seal off. I ended up crushing it when it escaped. That was not the desired outcome.
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u/ReptilianRevolt 11h ago
Then we have superstitious people around the world who claimed that various types of small animals can enter humans. Now there is no stopping them.
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u/Last-Presence5434 8h ago
I can’t imagine the pain from the rabies shots but you have to do it! I would have prob passed out .😵
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u/cognizant-ape 7h ago
Have we considered it was crawling OUT of her mouth, and she is the Bat Queen?
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u/LostKnight84 1d ago
Who wouldn't have that reaction?