Hi All,

I’ve been a long time watcher of these forums and have always had bad health anxiety. Usually about cancer or heart attacks though.

Ive been mostly ok for a while, but Ive just finished a cruise around the Caribbean.

On the 21st I was on a hotel resort beach and held a photo-resort monkey, as it came off me it made an incidental tiny scratch. I googled monkey scratches and the first things that appeared were rabies.

I went and spoke to the cruise guest relations director who spoke to the port agent and assured us that all animals in a resort beach must have papers and be vaccinated. I guess that should have been enough reassurance but it wasn’t. I went to the ship doctor who also said he didn’t think there was any real risk given the circumstances, he also asked me if the animal appeared strange or aggressive and I said no that it was happily being held by lots of people- probably cruel in hindsight.

So I’ve been on this spiral the last few days and pretty much ruined my cruise. Spent most days googling rabies and researching the risks. I got myself so worked up and had a few panic attacks.

Apparently the risk from a scratch is extremely low anyway and also, monkeys are considered low risk in terms of rabies. Beside the fact that we were assured by the port agent.

I noticed within a day or two of this happening my arms felt achey, and after 5 days I started to have a terrible cough, sore throat and chills. I’m trying to rationalise that I was on a cruise wirh 1000’s of people, and also a long haul flight before, combined with the likely weakened immune system from the extreme anxiety and stress. I also know what it’s like to create symptoms or fixate on them. I believed I had lymphoma for years and developed a lot of the symptoms.

I just wanted to write out how I felt, because this site has given me a great deal of comfort over the years. Im really struggling to convince myself that I just have the flu and that this isn’t connected to the monkey. Although, I do appreciate it typically takes 3 weeks- 12 weeks for rabies to develop and it seems unlikely I would be feeling unwell after just a few days.