The latest on the bat story. This is unbelievable. So, the bat attack occurred late Thursday night/early Friday morning. The bat was "killed" early Friday morning, placed in a small, white trash bag which was tied in a double-wraparound knot to be air tight. It was then placed in a no longer needed New Egg box which was taped with wrapping tape and was likely air tight as well.
The bat was then taken to work less than 24 hours from the attack and picked up by a game warden. Strangely, but fortunately, the bat was still alive (keeping brain and Negri bodies more intact). It was then placed in a refrigerator at exactly 36 degrees. The game warden then called the courier company to deliver the bat to the state lab at the Maine CDC in Augusta the following day. Given that it takes one day to test it, I should then know the status of the bat in under 96 hours so I can make a decision on whether to start PEP.
It is now Friday, exactly one week since the bat was given to the game warden and still no word from the state lab. So, I spoke with an official at the Maine CDC who then forwarded me to a senior official at the Dept of Vaccine Preventable Illness and Infectious Disease. She then took my story and went to look for my results. First she asked if I were a veterinarian. Vet = high chance of exposure. I said no I was a pediatrician. I would think that pediatrician = high chance of having patient with bat bite, but as soon as I told her I was a pediatrician, she said, "So you had a bat in the house?" What, was it in the papers?
Anyway she returned to the phone and informed me there was no record its being delivered! I was horrified. All that work to get the bat. I should have driven the bat myself, and she agreed that she would advise that but since they generally don't know bat bitten humans are out there, they can't contact them. She told me she would call the game warden at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Hampden division and get back to me. Thirty minutes later I was on the phone with her again. It seems the bat was taken back to MIFW and refrigerated, but the game warden forgot to call the courier.
After a long description of the events on Thursday night, she told me, given how often the bat flew at me and his proximity to me and given the fact that I was not sure if I had been bitten or scratched and given the fact that the bat seemed intent at cutting off all escape routes from my house including hiding behind the toilet in the downstairs bathroom and, furthermore, sleeping in a dark corner of my home theater room where the fact that I am likely to be playing an action movie, loudly while inebriated making at attack much more likely to be successful, and my pension to write long run-on sentences, she recommended I start the immunization series. She stated that there was now a 50% chance that the lab would be able to successfully test the bat.
Which I did. I just don't know about the ten 1 mL shots of Rabies Immune Globulin.
The irony is the game warden is the husband of one of the medical assistants at the family practice office in the same building. And, also ironic due to the fact that this same game warden severely disciplined the boyfriend of one of my medical assistants for having deer antlers on his garage wall. Apparently, it is much more important to lecture antler mounters than to deliver possibly rabid bats.
