The Bat Saga: Lesson Learned

I rarely update this blog anymore, but its useful for instances like this, so here goes.

For those of you who have already heard about our "bat saga,"  thanks for your prayers and for asking about it. Below is the most current info.  For those of you who haven't, here's the skinny:

Thursday night
We found a sickly bat in our downstairs entry way, inside.  I covered it with a bucket and slid it out the front door. I snapped a photo for the amusement of my tweeps and posted it on twitter.  My public health nurse mom saw it, called, and said we need to make sure that bat doesn't have rabies.  In my 33 years, I'm sure I've learned that bats are one of the main sources of rabies (a fatal neurological disease), but I didn't remember at the time.  When I went to look outside and see if the bat was still there, it was too late, he'd flown away, or so we thought.

We didn't know if we had been exposed to the bat and possible rabies. We didn't know how long he'd been in our house or how he got there. We researched and discovered that bats can bite you without you even realizing it because their teeth are so small.  Everyone we talked to Thursday night thought we were going to have to get the rabies vaccine.

Friday
Nat spent all day on the phone with the state vets, animal control, health departments, doctors, Bruce Wayne, and other local bat experts.  Since she also has mad detective skills, she went snooping and found that our lil friend had climbed off our front stoop and died.  This was great news, because now we could test and see if the bat was rabid.  Animal control came and sent him off to be tested, but sadly, since he was outside and dead overnight, another animal had eaten part of his brain, so our chances of being able to test him were limited. We just had to wait.

Saturday 
The test results just got called back to us and they could not test the bat, so now we're left with 2 options:

1. Hope that we were not infected with rabies and let it ride. If we were exposed and not treated, then we'll all but certainly die. Kinda freaky to think about. But the chances of that bat having rabies and of us being exposed are so stinkin' slim.

2. Each get a series of five rabies vaccine shots over 14 days which cost close to $5000/person.  This is merely precautionary because we're not sure we were exposed.  The shots are supposedly really painful for lil ones, so we're not too excited about getting Honey 5 of them.

Now

Nat's on her way home from work and Honey is napping. Nat and I just decided over a phone call to take Honey to Brenner's children's hospital tonight and I think we're going to go ahead and get the treatments started as well.

Such a weird situation. If I would have just kept the bucket on the bat, this whole deal could have been so much simpler.  So, I wanted to write this post for a few reasons.

1. To make all of you aware of the danger of bats and rabies, if you didn't already know.  If I would have read a blog about bats before Thursday night, my life would be much less complicated.

2. Just to keep you in the loop.  It's easier than writing a long text message.

3. To ask for prayer. These past few days have just been way harder emotionally than we anticipated.  We're so thankful there is a vaccine (mad props to my boy Louis Pasteur), but the whole unknown piece of the puzzle makes it an uneasy dilemma.

Here's to Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, and Christian Bale,

Drew