Fear for rabies

[Dionysiapl]

hello fellow health anxiety sufferers, my story is really classic. I am from greece where we have A LOT of strays, everyone pets them especially cats and they go and sit on everyone and ask for food etc. So, 15 days ago i was scratched on my hand by a cat i was petting, it was a minor scratch but all i could think about since then is rabies and how somehow i got them from this cat. It was really friendly, not aggresive at all and it scratched me because i scared it. i called my doctor, the national organization of health in my country, asked online and researched endlessly only to find the same results, that there is no rabies in my coutry for the last 8 years, where there was a small outbreak in northen borders with mostly wild animals affected. I live in the capital which hasnt had a single case since the 70s maybe even before that. So,to my dissappointment, everyone concluded that i didnt need to be vaccinated, and that i had nothing to worry about. Ofc i wasnt convinced by any of this and was sure i was going to die. So, i kept visiting the cat , that was a stray but luckily lived in the same place and never moved. I visited like 5 times or more in 14 days and the cat is still ok, last time i checked was yesterday, the cat was fine, didnt have any symptoms of anything, it was really friendly and everyone around pet her. I was temporarily convinced by this but not really, because im still really anxious that i have rabies. I developed some symptoms in these 14 days that i associated with rabies like my hand hurting , being anxious etc, and now the new symptom is that whenever its time ro drink water i get anxious and my heart rate goes up, i also thought there were stuff wrong with my throat cause i felt weird when swallowing but sometimes the symptoms are gone, now i was feeling like a tingle in my throat and was imagining what it must feel like to have rabies and spasms in the throat and then i went to drink water and felt weird and reallya nxioys, and my throat tingling kinda, i got so scared i almost started crying, i woke up my parents and tried drinking water again but this time i didnt feel the tingle, i have many psychosomatic symptoms every time i fear an illness so i dont know what to think, my mind is convinced im dying but i did everything i could to protect myself from rabies, even monitoring the cat etc and i thought i would be calm by now but it doesnt happen, it doesnt help that symptoms of rabies include agitation, and fear and panic attacks from drinking water and fluids, like i get those but im so scared something is going to happen everytime that i dont know if these are symptoms???
Anyway just wanted to vent as i saw that rabies is a common fear among hypochondriacs

 

[E.B]

It sounds like you have figured the truth out! I also have struggled with rabies anxiety... everything you have said above shows you have no worries about rabies. The symptoms you mentioned are not symptoms of rabies.

 

[Dionysiapl]

I am still anxious that they are indeed symptoms of rabies though, also i cant find the cat anymore, i saw it in the 14th day though and it was fine but i wanted to check again, and its gone i hope it's not dead anyway, the only thing keeping me sane is that we dont have rabies in my country anymore lol, also my symptoms are not worsening as they should have by now i guess