I got rabies shots!

Yes, you read that correctly. Here is the short version:

I moved into my apartment Friday afternoon. Late Saturday night, while I was sleeping, I heard a disturbing fluttering in my apartment. I turned on the light over my bed, and an emormous bat suddenly swooped down at me. I leaned back and it barely missed my head (ala The Matrix). The bat was at least a foot wide (only about two inches long and probably a couple ounces at most). I remembered that bats aren't carnivores (or so I thought), so I got out of bed to chase it out of the house. (Bats aren't that uncommon in IA.)

I looked for the open window and couldn't find any! So, I opened one up and tried to chase him out with a broom. No luck. Eventually I decided to exhaust him with the broom and succeeded. Once I had him pinned under the bristles, I gently pinched his wings together and started walking towards the door to release him.

Crunch! Little did I know that bats have such flexible necks (like a bird or reptile, not like other mammals), for he reached down his side and crunched down on my thumb. I was wincing in pain, desperately trying to shake him off (like in a bad comedy movie), but he wouldn't budge. As the blood run down my thumb, tears welled up in my eyes. Eventually, he let go and flew out the now open door.

I called the Emergency Room to ask what I should do. I was actually inquiring about how to deal with the bite (because it wasn't a clean bite) to keep from getting infected. They asked me to bring in the bat to be tested. Apparently, I am supposed to know that when you are bitten by an animal, they need to disect the brain and test it for rabies. I was too kind in letting the bat go. They insisted I needed to come in for rabies shots.

We've all heard stories about rabies shots. Let me tell you, they are all true. I had to get 1400 ccs of corn-syrup thick injections (that is nearly a liter and a half, or 6 cups). It is so thick that the only tissue that can take it is muscle. But one site isn't enough. After 100-or-so in a given site, it blanches out like you just had a golf ball inserted under your skin. It was horrible. But the worst part was that they need to inject as much as possible in the bite site. This was my thumb. The doctor inserted the wide-gauge needle under my thumb nail and injected until my thumb was more than twice its original size. This was the most painful experience I can ever recall, and I have had some painful experiences. This (injections under the nail) is purportedly the most painful medical procedure. The Viet Cong (amongst others) would stick needles under the thumb nail as a toture method to get prisoners to speak. They didn't inject anything, though, especially not something as thick as corn syrup. I can now see how this torture works.

The moral of the story is not to be nice to animals in your home. Kill them. Especially if they have already bitten you. The other moral is to have good health insurance. This will cost my insurance company many thousands of dollars. Why? Because the immuno-globulin they injected was farmed from literally hundreds upon hundreds of horses. What they do is inject horses with rabies so they build up antibodies (like with antivenom from snake bites). They then filter all the horses blood and can harvest a few drops of the proper antibodies. Each vile therefore takes hundreds of horses and costs hundreds of dollars. Insurance rocks. The injections don't.

I need to go back every few days for booster shots (not as severe). I wish I could edit this post and improve it, but I don't want to relive the horror again. Sorry.

P.S. The Department of Health requires the other building residents know about this. Therefore, my neighbors will be introduced to me as "the guy who needed rabies shots."

P.P.S. Why not just a vaccine? It takes days to go into effect, and by the time you show symptoms, is too late to do anything and you are a goner. Not worth the risk.

(Yes, my political posts, including the Convention post, are still forthcoming.)