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

[Chivee]

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

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[Barstool Blues]

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.

 

[64bitmodels]

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]

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!

 

[Chloee_aand]

Hi Jay. I’m chloe. I’m a 17 year old girl from Canada Ontario. I’m petrified of contracting rabies. I believed a bat came in when I was sleeping and bit me and flew out. I keep getting physical symptoms like warm head headache ect and I’m starting to get really scared. In havent came into contact with any animal that I’m aware of. My dad sleeps with his window open and I’m scared a bat flew in came in my room and bit me while I was sleeping and flew out. I’m scared I got it and I avoid from eating drinking or moving from my bed in fear I will contract it another way somehow

 

[xNarcissus]

Here to share some experiences (I might come back with more as I remember because this is a longstanding thing for me so I might be forgetting a lot),

About two years ago, my roommate's rat took a chunk out of my finger while trying to grab a treat. Rationally, I knew that small rodents like rats and mice almost never carry rabies (they're so small that most bites would kill them outright). Rationally, I knew that against that rat's white pelt and pink tail, any bite throughout her whole life would have been glaringly obvious. Rationally, I knew there was no possibility of this bite being a vector for infection. But I spent the whole night steadily dissolving into barely-functioning anxiety and ended up going to the ER. For my psyche or blood I could not tell you.

I got a tetanus jab because I was due for that booster. The nurse who gave me that jab told me very patiently what I already knew. Little rodents like rats and mice aren't carriers. They die too fast. And I asked about a vaccine, just in case. And he said 1) he couldn't give a vaccine without a suspected/probable exposure, because of the CDC regulations, and 2) that rabies anxiety is extremely common, so much so it was less surprising to him than that I didn't flinch when I got the tetanus booster.

The bad news? I don't know of any especially effective antidote to this specific fear/phobia/delusion.

The good news? It's a common fear. Many other people have this anxiety. But the incidence is extremely low. If you have a probable exposure, you're aware and prepared to deal with that situation. If not? If something so infinitesimally unlikely were to happen - the universe cheated. It's not your fault. Not your problem. It's only like any other absurd unlikely disaster.

That's actually something a therapist discussed with me, as we looked out his window at the construction across the street. Because at any moment, a bus could knock over one of those cranes or an operator could suddenly discover a seizure disorder or a comet could slam into the planet - but I wasn't in his office for fear of those things, was I? I had (have) a very specific unlikely disaster scenario, and what might help is to think about why that specific disaster scenario sticks in my mind above all other possibilities.

Anyway - here's something I say to myself all the time, even if it doesn't help.

You could waste your time worrying, or you could spend your time living.

 

[gt3360z]

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.​

yooo can I message you man I've been really going through it with this rabies phobia

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.

Hey man I really relate to your experience I feel like I have been going mad over this. Can we chat ?

 

[IrishPatrick]

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.​

Hi jay, this is a powerful post. I have come to the conclusion that I have anxiety or am a hypochondriac, a couple of years ago I choked on a cough sweet. For weeks and months i was convinced it had somehow got down my windpipe and death was imminent. I was in the er many times over it.

last week I got a puppy, she is 3 months old and wasn’t vaccinated. She nipped me like all puppies do and licked me, I have since gotten her vaccinations done.Rabies in Ireland is very rare, but this didn’t stop me from convincing myself that I had rabies as soon as I started to feel ill. This post really has helped me.
Thank you very very much

 

[EvaC]

I joined this forum a year ago, when I was having terrible anxiety... time and counseling helped but it always threatens to return and it is starting to return again. My rabies anxiety keeps coming back everytime something happens -- like I think I see a bat or something brushes my head. RIght now, my beloved indoor only cat is very sick and dying and he has some neurological symptoms that make me worried he could have rabies. I have spent over a $1000 on vet consultations and nobody is sure what is wrong with him. They don't think it's rabies but that is not reassuring. I am going to have him euthanised probably tomorrow which is heartbreaking. It is also heartbreaking to me that I am scared to touch him or hold him right now when he really needs me, in case he is contagious. I had the full course of rabies vaccine last year but I know know my protective antibody titers have lowered because they were tested in May. I may go back for the two booster shots, becasue I was handling him and being exposed to saliva and was scratched, and I know I will once again be ridiculed for my concerns. Nybody with anxiety can get online counseling through betterhelp.com. They have financial assistance. It helped me last year.

 

[Gokul]

Hello! I can feel this thread. Right now, I’m going through something similar to this post.

Three days ago, I wanted to give some water to stray puppies which still live outside my house. Whilst I was pouring water into a plastic water box, I didn’t think about the box was out the whole day and I didn’t notice if some tiny water droplets splashed from that box, which already had some water in it.

I contemplated that box and rushed to a clinic where I convinced the doctor to take full PEP courses without RIG. He told me that I wouldn’t need an RIG for an unclear exposure - I’m still not sure if any water got into my eyes.

Now I’m worried that what if some other rabid dog drank water from the bowl. I googled a lot of about indirect ocular rabies transmission. Didn’t find any cases. I wanted to know that if the rabies virus could live more than an hour in water, which was definitely in more than 35°C, but there wasn’t a clear research on this matter. I am just going through the worst season of my life right now.

Imagining every worst case scenarios in my mind. Imagine when you’re from India and most of the doctors barely know anything about the transmission of rabies.

 

[Com26]

Hi

I'm new to this forum. Anyway, I've wanted to take the vaccine for well over two years.

I mistook a moth for a bat that flew into my window. It made contact on my hands, etc.

The next day, within 18 hours, I took my first vaccine dose. I took the third day shot on day 3 and also the day 7 shot yesterday.

This evening I wanted to remove my chain guard on my motorcycle which was making noise. I went to a mechanic and had it removed.

There was a dog, about three feet away, lying down, seemingly in good health. The Mechanic had kept the chain guard down and left.

I went inside the garage to ask for something. Then, I paid them for removing the guard and returned.

I tried keeping the chain guard on my motorcycle but I couldn't and it was dirty with all the mud.

I started wiping it with a cloth and tried to balance it on my lap but I couldn't. While trying to wipe it, I also felt the rusty sharpness of the iron on my hands but had no cuts at all.

But I started doubting whether the dog tried to smell or lick the chain guard. And my mind started throwing up the other questions one by one.

Picking up the chain guard with bare hands, feeling the rusty iron's sharpness on the back of my hand on my fingers, whether the dog licked it, whether it could get through through a tiny imperceptible cut, etc.

Will the Day 0, Day 3 and Day 7 vaccine shot be propyhlactic? Will I have immunity by this time? With no bites whatsoever on my mistaken bat encounter, they didn't give me an IG.

So, what can I do now? And they won't give me any vaccine or IG for this because it's against protocol and I can't introduce a day 8 or day 9 dose vaccine in the currently 5 day schedule.

Don't know if it's advisable either to do it this way. Can somebody help advise me on what I can do from here? Thank you all.

It's great to find people who have and share the same concerns as we have through this forum. Do want more of this in a world that otherwise feels insane to me. Thank y'all for that.

Locally, we call it chain guard. Don't know what it's called in the rest of the world. Plus, I'm not at my articulative best just owing to an inability to think clearly late in the night.

Regards
Dinesh

 

[MATD]

Anxiety can be very bad, to the point of delusional thinking, which is described in these posts. Rational thinking is gone, delusional thinking has replaced it. But with proper help it can be overcome. As the anxiety fades with treatment, it allows rational thinking again, the delusions fade away.

 

[Lacaille]

Hi, thank you to everyone in this thread who has shared their stories and especially to Jay. Reading this thread has made me feel a lot better and I felt I should add my voice too.

I haven't really had anxiety issues before, but when I learned about Rabies, for some reason it stuck with me and fear of it has festered in me, getting worse and worse over time and now it's affecting my sleep and my work.

Not too long after learning about Rabies, I was at my friend's lake house and slept outside on a couch on the deck due to the good weather. After that, I remembered Rabies, and kept Googling it and how many bats have it and how likely you are to contract it from sleeping on a couch outside and nonsense like that. I wasn't freaking out enough for it to be a serious problem though and I got over it after a bit.

The next incident was when I was sleeping in my bedroom with the window open. I woke up in the middle of the night and reflexively slapped my neck because of a sensation of something being there. Then I thought I heard a sound kind of like something fluttering towards my closet. I was half-asleep and the logical part of me assumes that I imagined the sound. If there was anything real going on on my neck, it was probably just a mosquito. Anyway, I didn't think that much of it and went back to sleep. The next day I remembered Rabies and have spiraled downhill from there. I cleaned my apartment and checked every nook and cranny looking for a bat. No bat, but maybe it got into a really hidden spot, or maybe it was able to fly back out the window (which I didn't close when I woke up).

That incident was about 60 days ago and I know that if I had been exposed to rabies via a wound to my neck then I would almost certainly already be dead by now (but maybe not!). I do have some discomfort there, which might be real discomfort from sleeping posture or something, or might be completely imaginary. I'm also aware that I'm hyper-focused on any sensation in that area, while ignoring similar sensations that naturally come and go in the rest of my body. Basically, I know I'm crazy, which is some solace I guess. I'm also obsessing about what it feels like when I swallow and if I might be developing hydrophobia, which is causing me to swallow a lot, and it turns out that swallowing a lot makes it harder to swallow, which can make you feel like you're developing hydrophobia... I've also felt mildly ill for the past couple of weeks, which happens to me often in the winter anyway. No fever. I know I don't have Rabies but can't stop thinking that maybe I do.

I'm just hoping that I'll get over it after I stay alive for another couple of weeks, and if I never sleep with my window open again maybe I'll be fine... hopefully. Much love to anyone else battling thoughts like these.