Hi all - this is my first post after over a year of lurking. Some background - I'm 36 (male) and live in Minnesota, USA with my wife and kids. I've struggled with various anxiety for a long time; usually it has focused on intrusive/ruminative thoughts somewhere in the GAD/OCD spectrum. I've occasionally had mild health anxiety in the past but in the last couple of months the health anxiety has grown pretty severe.
Toward the end of May, I saw a bat in our kitchen at breakfast. We had seen one in our unfinished basement about a month earlier but hadn't thought anything of it as we didn't think there was any way for them to get up into the house. I tried to capture the bat with a bowl and in the process ended up injuring its wing and killed it with a broom as it flopped around squealing on the floor (out of slight panic as my kids were nearby and I didn't want it to suddenly fly up and bite them). I picked up the dead bat with about six layers of thick paper towels and put it in a plastic bag before throwing it away. I then cleaned the area where the bat had been and the broom with Lysol wipes. I didn't think anything of it for about a week, other than to call a bat removal specialist who informed me we had a small colony of big brown bats (thankfully not protected species in my state) and he would do the necessary steps to seal/exclude them. Right after this incident I thoroughly searched my hands for any sign of a bite or scratch (not really anxious at this point, just being prudent) and didn't see anything (nor did I feel anything poke me at any point). At no point did I directly touch the bat and I had washed my hands thoroughly after it was over just to be safe.
Around a week later I made the mistake of Googling about bats and rabies and saw a bunch of scary articles about how bats can bite you in your sleep and you wouldn't know it, or how you could get scratched by one and not feel or see it. The CDC in the US actually recommends vaccination in a lot of circumstances where there was no contact with a bat at all (although most other countries such as Canada do not). In a panic, I went to the ER and gave the ER doc my whole story. The doctor called the health department and they agreed that since a) I never had direct skin contact with the bat and b) there was no evidence the bat was ever in a bedroom (although it theoretically could have flown into mine and my wife's bedroom by going up the stairs and through an open door), that this was a low-risk encounter and neither I or anyone in my family needed vaccination. I almost asked for the vaccine anyway but in the US this is very expensive (over $10000 in a lot of cases) and insurance might not cover it if not recommended by the health department.
This should have been the end of it, but unfortunately the past 7-8 weeks have been sheer hell for me. Around the same time I went to the ER I started feeling tingling in my left hand and arm (which was not the hand I used to dispose of the dead bat). I've had weeks where my neck and shoulder really hurt, or where I had bad headaches, or where I had dry mouth and a sore throat. About a month after the initial incident, I was starting to realize I was going to be fine when I happened to look at my left hand and see two small skin-colored bumps around 1cm apart. I discovered these were some kind of blister by popping them but they just refilled after a few days. I showed them to my wife and asked if she thought I should be concerned and she said it was probably some random skin thing and not to worry about it. They itched/tingled a bit when I first noticed them and then not again for a few weeks until the last 3-4 days where they've been itching again. I tried to take a picture but they are so small and hard to see (and flesh-colored) they don't show up well via camera. I did some Googling and the closest thing I could find to match is dyshidrotic eczema and I am seeing a doctor this afternoon to take a look at them.
I've read through a lot of threads on rabies fear and at first glance my situation seems less fantastical than most (e.g. there was an actual bat in my house at one point), but I am a pretty logical person and realize that it is highly, highly unlikely that I have rabies. I just can't convince myself of this 100%. By the time I noticed the weird blister things the bat removal specialist had sealed and excluded the bats from our house and we haven't seen any since the one in late May. The chances of some weird blister developing in the exact site where a bat bit a month earlier seems pretty remote. If all of the symptoms I've had since early June were really rabies I'd be dead by now (although I get around that by thinking "Maybe those earlier symptoms were psychosomatic but these are the real deal"). I have some good days and some bad; no sooner do I convince myself everything is fine then I get some new tingle or itch or pain or sore throat or whatever.
Do people have any tips on how I can get over this? I talked to my wife about it a bit at first and she basically thought I was crazy, so I've stopped mentioning anything to her. The ER doc and the health department have said I had a low-risk encounter and didn't need the vaccine (but if course I wonder if maybe I left out some critical detail). If all of my weird intermittent symptoms would just go away I think I could get over this. I am seeing a psychiatrist that I've seen in the past this week so hopefully he can help me as well, but I wanted to throw this out to the forum as this worry seems pretty common on here. Please help and provide advice!
---------- Post added at 15:35 ---------- Previous post was at 12:09 ----------
Update - went to the doctor this afternoon on the bumps. She diagnosed them as dyshidrotic eczema and said to use hydrocortisone cream. I told here about my bat worries and she said that there is "no way" that these marks could be from a bat bite (given that they popped like water blisters and they haven't changed appearance in about a month).
I am feeling better now but just waiting for the anxiety process to talk me into thinking I am in trouble again.
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Originally Posted by mn_guy
