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Rabies Phobia Ruins Lives (But Let Me Give You Hope...)

jay_03

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Hello. I have neglected writing about this for far too long. It is time to shed some light so others struggling will have peace of mind knowing they are not alone, and there are people you can talk to.

My name is Jay. I am 19, an American male college student and general consensus claims I am a fun guy who really enjoys life who just happens to have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I am involved in a lot, I volunteer, encourage talking about mental health, and I am very active creatively. I enjoyed good food and drink and spent my days happy and in love with my beautiful girlfriend and spending time with my family when I got the chance.

Except that USED to be me. Until I learned about rabies and its 99.9% mortality rate if untreated. (Only confirmed survivor by wild chance is Jeanna Giese.) To preface, there are 327,000,000 people that live in the U.S. On average, only around 1-3 people a year die in the States from this 100% preventable yet terminal zoonotic disease carried by bats, skunks, raccoons, and dogs. But my GAD didn't care, it turned to something new, HEALTH anxiety. I became obsessed to the point of borderline insanity. I found myself waking up at 3 AM with my phone flashlight shining on my body parts, looking for any stray marks and redness. I grew a fear of the dark where I would imagine bats flying out of the darkness and biting my thumb without me realizing. I have Googled THOUSANDS of times, to the point where I can quote to you, not only rabies statistics worldwide, but exactly how to prevent and identify rabies in every single organism on this planet.

I felt like I was going insane. It started to tear apart my relationships with people. I was having panic attacks every single time it got dark out. I have sent hundreds of texts and photos to my family, causing justifiable frustration in them that would grow with every single file. I would bother my girlfriend every single time I felt any bodily discomfort, and now we barely talk when we used to spend every waking moment together and happy. Every muscle twitch, tendon pain, swallowing of spit, bruise, dent, mark, and cut I analyzed, assessed, documented, sobbed over, and resigned my mind to the inevitability of my own death by this awful disease. My father is a physician, I have received the mark of good health from him no less than a thousand times, and my mind is still paralyzed by the thought of being unknowingly infected with little time left.

As time went on, eventually I got a cold, as humans do. Now a cold brings two things: muscle aches, the shakes, and throat closing/hypersalivation, the three marked symptoms presented in the rabid infection. I became hysterical. Now I had assumed I had entered prodrome and the one thing WebMD and every other godawful health page on the internet will tell you is once rabies starts symptoms, it is too late. I was/am frenzied, immediately throwing my mental health and life into disarray and sobbing every night until I was out of anything to cry while I thought I was on the descent to the worst possibility.

By now the cold is almost over, and I am still alive, still writing this forum post, and plan on being alive for a very long time after this is posted. But I am here to tell anyone who is suffering from this same thought, anyone looking to shed light on “rabies anxiety”, and anyone feeling alone and isolated right now because of how this phobia affects lives, that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

You are going to be OKAY. You are LOVED. You are VALUABLE. I believe in YOU, and the only advice I can give is to NOT believe that voice in yourself right now, and to believe me. That feeling you have in your head is your anxiety, not a Lyssavirus, like rabies. Anxiety DOES cause physical symptoms and they will feel scary, but you are going to be just fine. Keep reading that as much as you need to. You are going to be just fine. You are stronger than this and I know that we can all win against these untrue thoughts, however incessant and daunting they sound and feel to you. I still struggle with them, on the daily, but I have struggled far too long, and that is why I decided to write this and do something about it. If you want to talk about your fear, DM me, I am here for you. If you need to just vent, DM me, I am here for you. If you are feeling like you no longer see hope, DM me, I am here for you. Also if it has gotten to that point, please seek professional help. Even if you have to do it yourself and you are scared, I promise you, life is better with you in it and you need to share how you feel with someone. This anxiety is not worth losing yourself with it. Believe me, I struggled.

This is my story and this is how I struggled. I still struggle sometimes, but it does get easier, a little more so every day. I love you, don‘t give up hope. That cold is just a cold. That scratch is just a scratch. That bruise is just a bruise. It is going to be okay, people love you. Breathe deep, and believe in me, just like I believe in you.

We're going to be okay.​
 

E.B

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I have been dealing with different created scenarios the past few months regarding rabies. What bothers me the most is my dramatic 180 regarding animals. I used to go completely out of my way to pet different animals. I mean way out of my way....

Now every single animal potentially has rabies. I can't go to family functions because of the animals. Im not sure whether i need to force myself to go play with animals again or what. The 180 that has become is very extreme.
 

jay_03

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I have been dealing with different created scenarios the past few months regarding rabies. What bothers me the most is my dramatic 180 regarding animals. I used to go completely out of my way to pet different animals. I mean way out of my way....

Now every single animal potentially has rabies. I can't go to family functions because of the animals. Im not sure whether i need to force myself to go play with animals again or what. The 180 that has become is very extreme.
E.B, I understand. I initially backed away from any and all animals. I am not sure whether or not this is common knowledge but canine rabies is basically eradicated in the U.S. Due to the success of domestic vaccination, all dogs, whether at a shelter or in a house are vaccinated. Once the State catches a stray, they will initially vaccinate for the public health. Cats have a special sense and awareness that keeps them from getting the virus due to sheer instinct, so no need for panic with cats too. Domestic animals, are usually pretty a-okay, in the states at least. Most wild animals have the sensory thing to stay away from the virus, the only one that still gets me freaked out sometimes are bats. Only around 1% of bats do carry rabies, yet I still some days cannot shake the feeling that they all do. Funniest part is my favorite superhero has always been Batman! And now I can't even look at the Bat symbol without flinching.
 

E.B

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I hear you. I go through phases where I do the whole was that a bat that just hit me, or making sure windows are closed or sometimes even checking areas to make sure bats aren't there.
 

jay_03

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I hear you. I go through phases where I do the whole was that a bat that just hit me, or making sure windows are closed or sometimes even checking areas to make sure bats aren't there.
I have done the exact same thing. But I totally promise it’s gonna be okay. Bats have to land to bite and you would definitely notice one if it landed! It’s going to be okay!
 

E.B

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Im wondering if i need to force myself to go and be like i used to be regarding animals, going to pet/play with them, because in reality that's who i am or atleast who i have always been i should say.
 

davidbelleca

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Hello. I have neglected writing about this for far too long. It is time to shed some light so others struggling will have peace of mind knowing they are not alone, and there are people you can talk to.

My name is Jay. I am 19, an American male college student and general consensus claims I am a fun guy who really enjoys life who just happens to have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I am involved in a lot, I volunteer, encourage talking about mental health, and I am very active creatively. I enjoyed good food and drink and spent my days happy and in love with my beautiful girlfriend and spending time with my family when I got the chance.

Except that USED to be me. Until I learned about rabies and its 99.9% mortality rate if untreated. (Only confirmed survivor by wild chance is Jeanna Giese.) To preface, there are 327,000,000 people that live in the U.S. On average, only around 1-3 people a year die in the States from this 100% preventable yet terminal zoonotic disease carried by bats, skunks, raccoons, and dogs. But my GAD didn't care, it turned to something new, HEALTH anxiety. I became obsessed to the point of borderline insanity. I found myself waking up at 3 AM with my phone flashlight shining on my body parts, looking for any stray marks and redness. I grew a fear of the dark where I would imagine bats flying out of the darkness and biting my thumb without me realizing. I have Googled THOUSANDS of times, to the point where I can quote to you, not only rabies statistics worldwide, but exactly how to prevent and identify rabies in every single organism on this planet.

I felt like I was going insane. It started to tear apart my relationships with people. I was having panic attacks every single time it got dark out. I have sent hundreds of texts and photos to my family, causing justifiable frustration in them that would grow with every single file. I would bother my girlfriend every single time I felt any bodily discomfort, and now we barely talk when we used to spend every waking moment together and happy. Every muscle twitch, tendon pain, swallowing of spit, bruise, dent, mark, and cut I analyzed, assessed, documented, sobbed over, and resigned my mind to the inevitability of my own death by this awful disease. My father is a physician, I have received the mark of good health from him no less than a thousand times, and my mind is still paralyzed by the thought of being unknowingly infected with little time left.

As time went on, eventually I got a cold, as humans do. Now a cold brings two things: muscle aches, the shakes, and throat closing/hypersalivation, the three marked symptoms presented in the rabid infection. I became hysterical. Now I had assumed I had entered prodrome and the one thing WebMD and every other godawful health page on the internet will tell you is once rabies starts symptoms, it is too late. I was/am frenzied, immediately throwing my mental health and life into disarray and sobbing every night until I was out of anything to cry while I thought I was on the descent to the worst possibility.

By now the cold is almost over, and I am still alive, still writing this forum post, and plan on being alive for a very long time after this is posted. But I am here to tell anyone who is suffering from this same thought, anyone looking to shed light on “rabies anxiety”, and anyone feeling alone and isolated right now because of how this phobia affects lives, that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

You are going to be OKAY. You are LOVED. You are VALUABLE. I believe in YOU, and the only advice I can give is to NOT believe that voice in yourself right now, and to believe me. That feeling you have in your head is your anxiety, not a Lyssavirus, like rabies. Anxiety DOES cause physical symptoms and they will feel scary, but you are going to be just fine. Keep reading that as much as you need to. You are going to be just fine. You are stronger than this and I know that we can all win against these untrue thoughts, however incessant and daunting they sound and feel to you. I still struggle with them, on the daily, but I have struggled far too long, and that is why I decided to write this and do something about it. If you want to talk about your fear, DM me, I am here for you. If you need to just vent, DM me, I am here for you. If you are feeling like you no longer see hope, DM me, I am here for you. Also if it has gotten to that point, please seek professional help. Even if you have to do it yourself and you are scared, I promise you, life is better with you in it and you need to share how you feel with someone. This anxiety is not worth losing yourself with it. Believe me, I struggled.

This is my story and this is how I struggled. I still struggle sometimes, but it does get easier, a little more so every day. I love you, don‘t give up hope. That cold is just a cold. That scratch is just a scratch. That bruise is just a bruise. It is going to be okay, people love you. Breathe deep, and believe in me, just like I believe in you.

We're going to be okay.​
Hey brother, I'm new here, Im suffering this kind of situation but yours is worst compared to me but man i have extreme phobia on rabies after i googled symptoms and research a lot about rabies. Last month I was scratched by my pet cat when i was teasing it and one of its nail pierced through and it bleed a bit so i washed it with detergent and poured an alcohol, the wound is at my wrist btw and I went to a local hospital and they said that i have to observe my pet cat for 3 to 2 weeks and until now the cat is healthy but my mind not satisfied by it so i went to animal bite center to pay for vaccination and it cost me a lot of money because the government hospital wont vaccinate me for free and after i finished my schedule for vaccine im a bit eased but i still had the stigma of having a rabies virus and my anxiety still attacks me, also i watched rabies patients in YouTube die and until now it still haunts me , I didn't have flu symptoms or any symptoms from rabies but my mind is toying with like someone's whispering like when i use my electric fan and the air is steady on me, my mind's saying (you have aerophobia) and take note it's one of symptoms right? but im not really scared of air breeze, what do you think bro? is this cause by anxiety? my physical health is 100% ok though and i don't have a flu it's just this aerophobia and hydrophobia keeps crossing my mind but i can drink water and not scared. what are your thoughts bro? im planning on consulting to psychiatrist, what do u think? sorry for my bad english
 

davidbelleca

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Hi, i am still alive. So i believe i have not rabies... Also... i take the rabies vaccines (yep all the 4 is was not so logic answer but a answer to stop my anxiety). I also go to a psychologist and a psychiatrist, because in my case... i never see the bat i dream. So i believe now for sure, it was a dream.
What can i say is that the cat need to stay in close interaction with a rabied animal to catch rabies, also if the cat has the vaccines, is unlikely to adquire rabies even if the cat was in close interaction with a rabied animal
hi mate, what did the psychiatrist tell you? did it help you cope up?
 

davidbelleca

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Yep it help, the psychiatrist tell me that it looks like a neurosis, related with a obsessive behavior. Now i am taking a pill (luvox) who help to it.
If you are sure, your cat is okay, he/she was vaccinated and has no chance to get rabies but you still think in it. it could be something similar
yes, my mind keeps thinking about rabies 24 hours my cat is still alivr and healthy, she scratched me in my wrist part when i was toying with her, this cat is unvaccinated but i am certain it is not rabid because if she's rabid she would have died long time ago right? and this we always put a leash on our pet cats because we live beside the highway. this anxiety suddenly popped up when after 2 weeks ago when i watched videos of rabies patients in YouTube and reading different cases in Google! and after that, last week when i woke up, boom, i got obsessed with rabies it wont get off my mind, and my thoughts pretend that i am scared of air breeze and water but it's in the back of my mind i sleep with my electric fan on and drink a lot water and take a bath , i aint scared of these and remember these symptoms are on the last stages of rabies right? my body feels okay and i never felt ill or flu like symptoms , its just its so damn frustrating in my head that the word "rabies" won't leave me! im still playing with my cats though , i think this is mild anxiety, what are ur thoughts? :(
 

DocFoxey

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Hey, Jay thank you so much. It's good to hear I’m not alone. I struggled with this one once in college and currently, it has come back with a vengeance probably because of all the stress currently.

I had trouble swallowing a pill on Monday and suddenly the unwanted thought that it could be rabies came because my cat caught a baby mouse a few months ago and I tried to save it. The mouse was healthy and neither of us got bit. I disinfected everything and wasvery careful. The mouse didn't make it but because I overfed it or screwed up or because it had been in the cat’s mouth. None the less I have been seeing symptoms everywhere and having physical symptoms that I know are probably anxiety but every time something else triggers them I spiral out of control and feel like I am losing my mind.
 
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Freakish

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Hi I'm new to this site so I'm sorry if I mess up
But I'm a 18 yr female and have had anxiety as long as I can remember. It makes me go completely delusional and right now I'm freaking out because I touched a cat who might have rabies then touched my eye (I didn't think it had rabies because my mom told me it didnt) but then I started thinking about it and i cant calm down. I've been panicking for like 7 hours now. Everyone is telling me that its not possible just by what I did but I still can't calm down. Even my mom who is a vet is telling me I'll be okay and I can't bring myself to believe her. This has happened so many times before. Every time I touch an animal that looks a lil different or sick I start panicking completely. My whole family thinks I'm crazy. I don't know what to do. And I feel so dumb for petting the kitty. This always happens but at first I never think it through. I can't sleep i keep thinking about this.
 

DickeyFuller

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Hi I'm new to this site so I'm sorry if I mess up
But I'm a 18 yr female and have had anxiety as long as I can remember. It makes me go completely delusional and right now I'm freaking out because I touched a cat who might have rabies then touched my eye (I didn't think it had rabies because my mom told me it didnt) but then I started thinking about it and i cant calm down. I've been panicking for like 7 hours now. Everyone is telling me that its not possible just by what I did but I still can't calm down. Even my mom who is a vet is telling me I'll be okay and I can't bring myself to believe her. This has happened so many times before. Every time I touch an animal that looks a lil different or sick I start panicking completely. My whole family thinks I'm crazy. I don't know what to do. And I feel so dumb for petting the kitty. This always happens but at first I never think it through. I can't sleep i keep thinking about this.
Been in a similar situation a year ago when a bat literally pooped in my eye (not kidding, this actually happened). In the long term it's always best to treat those fears with a therapist. But I know myself that in the short term (when the anxiety hits) that's not an option. Maybe consider a rabies vaccine? They work post-exposure and even if the chance of you having contracted rabies is pretty small, it will help remedy the much more acute anxiety
 

tough nugget

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Hey Jay, thank you so much. My fear of rabies started almost 2 years ago when a stray dog licked my finger (yeah nothing bit me) and a week ago i was out on a walk and i thought i saw bats (they were probably birds because it is pretty cold where i live rn but my brain wants me to believe they were bats). Since then I've been having panic attacks almost every day. Few days ago I found this website and this post. Whenever I feel really anxious i read this and it makes me feel better.
 
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Johndoes

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Hi, thanks for sharing this.
About 6 days ago, there were bats in my lawn at night and ive never seen bats there beforehand and several of them were flying pretty close to me and really fast and it could have even been close to my face and now im so worried that they could've flown close to the back of my head or behind me or something and scratched or bitten me without me knowing or feeling it as many people say bat bites and scratches can sometimes go unnoticed and im so scared now that i have rabies, i checked later and i didn't see any visible bite or scratch marks when i checked but they can be invisible right? And i didnt check scalp so could the bite mark be there? I didn't feel any biting or scratching from what i remember but if it went unnoticed, i could have been bitten or scratched right? Im so scared, i have been having a sharp headache that comes and goes for like 2 days now and although my body temperature when i checked it was below 37 C, but i feel feverish and i checked and the initial symptoms of rabies are flu like symptoms and also i feel a little pain behind my ear when i softly touch it which could be the tingling sensation from rabies? and now i have severe anxiety as well which is also a rabies symptom yes? Rabies would be very painful and i don't want to go thru that pain, although my logical brain tells me no i keep thinking i should kill myself while i still can because if its rabies, the disease would progress into severe symptoms soon. Also even if i wasn't bitten or scratched, because they flew so close to me, could aerosolised rabies from the bats have infected me??? I never post in forums but im scared to death right now. Thank you so much guys. Also im not too sure how close the bats flew or if they even touched me but the more i think about it the more my brain tries to exaggerate and create memories and now im not sure which memories are true and which are not because the more i think about it the more i actually think i felt a bat bite although i know for a fact that, regardless of a scratch, i definitely didn't feel a bite, although it could've happened without me knowing but my brain is now trying to create a memory where i felt and knew that i was bitten, hopefully that made sense? Im terrified right now. I called the hospital nurse and she was very clear that without a visible wound that didn't draw blood, they wouldn't administer the vaccine.

And im also getting chills right now, i feel feverish and restless which are rabies symptoms but my temperature is below 37. Im really scared I have rabies and im going to die.
Hey Jay, thank you so much. My fear of rabies started almost 2 years ago when a stray dog licked my finger (yeah nothing bit me) and a week ago i was out on a walk and i thought i saw bats (they were probably birds because it is pretty cold where i live rn but my brain wants me to believe they were bats). Since then I've been having panic attacks almost every day. Few days ago I found this website and this post. Whenever I feel really anxious i read this and it makes me feel better.
I completely understand you brother. 100%
 
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nujabezt

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i got hit by a bat during evening when i was riding my bike, i have insomnia and flu symptom now, doctor dont take me seriously, i dont know who to talk to, and i am scared of telling my friend and colleague

btw, i live in indonesia, theres a reason to be afraid, i made appointment with doctor tomorrow to get vaccine shot, btw sorry for bad english
 

schitz

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I got bit on the finger by my girlfriends domestic gerbil 3-4 weeks ago and since then the fear of rabies has kept me up at night. Im afraid of my dog, I cant be alone otherwise my anxiety sky rockets. The gerbil is still alive so it most likely doesnt have rabies. I live in the US and I never go outside because of covid so I dont have that much reason to be afraid but for some reason I still am.
Are you okay?
 

Chivee

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My anxiety is so bad when it comes to rabies..i end up feeling suicidal.

Sent from my KB2001 using Tapatalk
 

Barstool Blues

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I have severe ocd/hypochrodnia and have been going through severe anxiety thinking I have or am going to get rabies. I think one thing that's making it worse, too, is the fact that I'm an alcoholic who just quit drinking 38 days ago and my brain chemistry is extremely fragile right now. It basically started a week ago when I found weird scratches on one arm after I had ridden the exercise bike. I was just sitting at my computer and saw a bunch of scratches on my arm and was like wtf? I wasn't wearing a shirt while exercising and then wiped down with a pillow case I was using for sweat and thought maybe it had just scratched me and didn't think anything of it. I'm not sure when it turned into a fear of rabies from a bat...maybe I saw something on tv or online I dunno...that's always a good way to trigger my hypochondria especially if I'm experiencing symptoms that could be relatable. Around that time I'm been having a slight headache and around the scratches it was itching and I was reading that those can be early symptoms. I've also been feeling like my balance is off and I may have a slight fever. (haven't actually checked and don't feel particularly sick, but I've had a slight lightheaded feeling) Let me be clear on this, too... I live in an urban area and HAVE NEVER EVEN SEEN A BAT IN PERSON IN MY LIFE. I mention this because it's not like I live in a rural area or have come in contact with bats to make me so anxious as I am now. (I of course know there are bats around, but it's obviously rarer to have a run in with them in a city compared to the country) I remember calling my mom and she was kind of laughing and I told her that it isn't funny. The rational side of my brain knows I'm being crazy about this, but that doesn't stop the other side of my brain from obsessing about this and nearly becoming non functional from fear and anxiety that I'm going to die.

All this has made me then obsessively look up Rabies and everything about it (like the horrible death you will experience) and after reading about the incubation period it has only made me even worse as about 5-6 years when I was walking down the street with a friend there was a sickly looking rat just sitting there and it wouldn't move when we were coming so my friend threw a stick at it. When the stick slightly hit or or hit near it it darted forward and tried to climb up my exposed ankle and then took off into the street. It's been a long time and I know it didn't bite me and from what I remember from my thorough examination of my ankle there weren't any marks that showed it broke skin. (at least from my memory) I remember being worried about rabies then too for maybe a week or so, but just moved on. In my thorough study of rabies I read how the incubation period (while super rare) can last over several years up to 10 years and so now that has made me start worrying that maybe I'm getting the full rabies now or will get it because part of how long it can take is how far away from the brain and how much of the virus got in. (since if I did get it would be a very little amount as if he did break skin and I didn't notice it would have been slightly)

If not for Covid I'd probably just go to the ER and say a bat scratched me and I wasn't able to catch to get them to give me the rabies vaccine (I'm on disability for anxiety disorders so am medi/medi so not worried about having to pay anything), but I live in southern california and with covid doing a number on ER's and hospitals I feel embarrassed to go when logically I know I'm probably fine. There's also the fact that I was just at the ER a month or so ago because I was obsessing about a blood clot in my legs and wanted it checked with an ultra sound. (the fourth time I've had this done since 2018...) I'm going to see my pcp tomorrow about liver related issues (i'm an alcohlic) and am going to bring this all up at the end. I'm hoping with his reassurance I can finally start to get over it because it's making me borderline insane right now. Every little itch or pain or red mark makes me think a bat scratched or bit me. I was over at my cousins yesterday with my brother and his dog had a wet nose and it made me paranoid about it's saliva. While going into his garage with a bunch of boxes stacked all over the place to get a drink out of the fridge I was being paranoid that maybe a bat or rat or something is hiding in there and maybe when I'm walking by i'm getting a scratch or bite and not noticing. This is also making me obsessive at home during bed time. I have this hole at the top of my wall when they were going to put cable wire through it that goes into the attic (I guess...not my house) and it was never clogged up and after reading about how Bats can roost up in attics and how small they can be and that they can get through small spaces (some species as small as a dime hole) it's made me worry that maybe a rabid bat is getting through and scratching or biting me.

The worst thing about this all is that it's really making me want to drink so I can can relax and have some peace. I had been taking antabuse (a drug that makes you sick if you drink alcohol and therefore makes it impossible for an alcoholic to drink whether they want to or not), but I stopped taking it a few days ago and am just waiting for a week or so for it wear off so I can drink. I'd probably already have tried to drink, but about 2 years ago the blood clot obsession made me get a heart rate obsession and now I check my heart rate dozens and dozens of times a day. One of reactions you can get from drinking while antabuse is still in the body is a rapid heart rate and I know that will make me have an anxiety attack and feel like I'm going to have a heart attack and die and I really don't want to deal with that if I can help it. I'm not currently on any long term anti anxiety (zoloft, luvox etc) or short term anxiety medication either and I really should be. The thing is that I really have to see how my liver is as there is a good chance I have fibrosis/cirrhosis (not a hypochrondia thing...my liver enzyme's were very high and way past the normal range in my blood work at the ER 38 days ago) and I know a lot of those drugs can be hard on the liver so I have to have an ultrasound on my liver to see if it's now scarred and then to see what i can even take. I really wish my pcp would at least prescribe some kind of benzo at least for this heavy anxiety I'm having, but I know he won't since I'm an alcoholic. I just hope that I get some reassurances from him and that that(and not getting sick and dying anytime soon) will help me get past this obsession so I can move on to the next one. (yay! :l)

Sorry for the essay.
 
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64bitmodels

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I have this problem as well. My birthday was just yesterday yet I could barely feel happy for myself because i am constantly worried about this rare deadly virus
I had found 2 marks on my arm that looked like a bat bite. i took action immediately and got myself some shots. I am still worried however because there was another mark on my leg that i had only seen days after the final day of the vaccination. this has constantly spiked my anxiety and now i am just worried about contracting the virus. It doesn't even matter that the aforementioned mark that i got on my leg doesn't even look like a bite but moreso a scratch, i am just worried and its really screwing up my life since i keep feeling like it's only a matter of time before i'm on the hospital bed. I would want to know if i have it, but 1 single test will not certainly determine if the virus is there and by the time i get the results, if it's positive i would have been dead already.
 

Kimberly N

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Hello. I have neglected writing about this for far too long. It is time to shed some light so others struggling will have peace of mind knowing they are not alone, and there are people you can talk to.

My name is Jay. I am 19, an American male college student and general consensus claims I am a fun guy who really enjoys life who just happens to have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I am involved in a lot, I volunteer, encourage talking about mental health, and I am very active creatively. I enjoyed good food and drink and spent my days happy and in love with my beautiful girlfriend and spending time with my family when I got the chance.

Except that USED to be me. Until I learned about rabies and its 99.9% mortality rate if untreated. (Only confirmed survivor by wild chance is Jeanna Giese.) To preface, there are 327,000,000 people that live in the U.S. On average, only around 1-3 people a year die in the States from this 100% preventable yet terminal zoonotic disease carried by bats, skunks, raccoons, and dogs. But my GAD didn't care, it turned to something new, HEALTH anxiety. I became obsessed to the point of borderline insanity. I found myself waking up at 3 AM with my phone flashlight shining on my body parts, looking for any stray marks and redness. I grew a fear of the dark where I would imagine bats flying out of the darkness and biting my thumb without me realizing. I have Googled THOUSANDS of times, to the point where I can quote to you, not only rabies statistics worldwide, but exactly how to prevent and identify rabies in every single organism on this planet.

I felt like I was going insane. It started to tear apart my relationships with people. I was having panic attacks every single time it got dark out. I have sent hundreds of texts and photos to my family, causing justifiable frustration in them that would grow with every single file. I would bother my girlfriend every single time I felt any bodily discomfort, and now we barely talk when we used to spend every waking moment together and happy. Every muscle twitch, tendon pain, swallowing of spit, bruise, dent, mark, and cut I analyzed, assessed, documented, sobbed over, and resigned my mind to the inevitability of my own death by this awful disease. My father is a physician, I have received the mark of good health from him no less than a thousand times, and my mind is still paralyzed by the thought of being unknowingly infected with little time left.

As time went on, eventually I got a cold, as humans do. Now a cold brings two things: muscle aches, the shakes, and throat closing/hypersalivation, the three marked symptoms presented in the rabid infection. I became hysterical. Now I had assumed I had entered prodrome and the one thing WebMD and every other godawful health page on the internet will tell you is once rabies starts symptoms, it is too late. I was/am frenzied, immediately throwing my mental health and life into disarray and sobbing every night until I was out of anything to cry while I thought I was on the descent to the worst possibility.

By now the cold is almost over, and I am still alive, still writing this forum post, and plan on being alive for a very long time after this is posted. But I am here to tell anyone who is suffering from this same thought, anyone looking to shed light on “rabies anxiety”, and anyone feeling alone and isolated right now because of how this phobia affects lives, that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

You are going to be OKAY. You are LOVED. You are VALUABLE. I believe in YOU, and the only advice I can give is to NOT believe that voice in yourself right now, and to believe me. That feeling you have in your head is your anxiety, not a Lyssavirus, like rabies. Anxiety DOES cause physical symptoms and they will feel scary, but you are going to be just fine. Keep reading that as much as you need to. You are going to be just fine. You are stronger than this and I know that we can all win against these untrue thoughts, however incessant and daunting they sound and feel to you. I still struggle with them, on the daily, but I have struggled far too long, and that is why I decided to write this and do something about it. If you want to talk about your fear, DM me, I am here for you. If you need to just vent, DM me, I am here for you. If you are feeling like you no longer see hope, DM me, I am here for you. Also if it has gotten to that point, please seek professional help. Even if you have to do it yourself and you are scared, I promise you, life is better with you in it and you need to share how you feel with someone. This anxiety is not worth losing yourself with it. Believe me, I struggled.

This is my story and this is how I struggled. I still struggle sometimes, but it does get easier, a little more so every day. I love you, don‘t give up hope. That cold is just a cold. That scratch is just a scratch. That bruise is just a bruise. It is going to be okay, people love you. Breathe deep, and believe in me, just like I believe in you.

We're going to be okay.​
Thanks for this, Jay!

As someone almost 26 years old, who has been dealing with health anxiety since they were 11 years of age, this is something that REALLY resonates with me. I have had more than I'd like to admit episodes of rabies fears. Getting myself better day by day! Therapy and a dab of medication has done the trick for me.

ANYONE who feels alone, or just needs a helping hand to talk to and sort through their anxieties, is always free to message me. Love to you all, and happy new year!
 
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