And, I left the 4th of July on a bit of a cliff hanger. I
made the first entry, clearly labeled part one, meaning there would be a
part two…and then disappeared. ::chuckles:: Well, once you hear the
story, you’ll understand stand why life has been considerably more
stressful and why I am just now getting around to writing about it.
::chuckles::
So I head to bed around 11 pm. I’m ALMOST asleep when I hear all this banging and cussing and thuds from downstairs. At first, I think David has fallen off the walking machine again. And then he yells out for me and says something about a bat. So I’m thinking either Josey pup has done something horrible (like chewed something up she shouldn’t have, or thrown up, or crapped everywhere) or that we are being robbed and David is yelling for me to get the bat.
So I throw on a robe (because I sleep nude) and head downstairs. I immediately see Josey is in her kennel so I’m like “Oh shit, she must have REALLY fucked up” and David’s yelling about being bitten by the bat. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Until I come around the corner and there is a bat (the mammal) laying on the living room floor. And it all clicks. So he goes and washes his hand. I scoop up the little bat into a trashcan and put a towel over it to calm it down and my husband. I then go check on my husband. He has the tiniest cut on his left index finger. But it is there.
Now, even with as country as I am, I have never dealt with a bat bite. So I google what to do. I’m sure we gotta go to the hospital if nothing else. I check out the bat and it appears just fine – straight up normal bat. David doesn’t want it in the house so we elect to put it outside. Yeah…not our brightest moment.
So we load up and head to the ER clinic at 11:30 pm. I am tortured in the waiting room because they have friggin’ TWILIGHT playing. Like shoot me now. They finally call me back and ask me if I can go look for the bat because it needs to be tested for rabies. Duh. So I go back to the house and look, but yeah…that bat is long gone.
The ER clinic doesn’t have the stuff to treat for rabies, so they call the hospital to make sure they have the necessary stuff before sending us over there. And because they basically just hung out with us, they didn’t charge us anything. Thank goodness. SO, we load up and head to the hospital ER. At midnight. On the 4th of July. I just knew it was going to be a madhouse. I was pleasantly surprised to be honest. It was super quiet.
Anyways. We get to do the first round of Rabies treatment…which is the worst. He has to get 12 mL of rabies immune globulin injected into the bite site. Which doesn’t sound too terrible. Until you remember it’s on the tip of his index finger. There is no way to put all 12 mL of anything there. So it ends up taking EIGHTEEN separate injections throughout his finger, his hand, up his forearm to his elbow to get all of the rabies immune globulin in. I swear he looked like the absolute WORST junkie ever. And THEN he got the first rabies vaccine in the other arm. He has to get three more on a very specific schedule.
We didn’t get home until 3:30 am.
His 2nd vaccine had to be on Tuesday (July 7th), 3rd on Saturday (July 11th), and 4th on Saturday (July 18th). So Monday was a scramble between the VA and various doctors and the county health department to find a place he could get the 2nd vaccine the NEXT DAMN DAY. Yeah, we were a bit stressed to say the least. But the VA really came through for us. They found a place that we could get it, even if it’s an hour away. Sucks, but hey, we will do what we gotta do.
But back to the bat and how all of that happened.
My husband works out when I go to bed. We have a weight machine in our living room. On the pull down bar, he hangs his work out gloves. The bat was inside the left work out glove.
As best we can figure out is at some point, when we were coming and going outside to watch all the various fireworks that all the neighbors were setting off, the bat came inside with us looking to escape all the explosions, noise, and gunpowder that was outside. It then found the gloves, which are the best place for a little, terrified bat to hide. Well, that is, until a human hand enters said glove.
Here’s the cute lil bastard:
He’s only about the size of a mouse. Not big at all.
So I head to bed around 11 pm. I’m ALMOST asleep when I hear all this banging and cussing and thuds from downstairs. At first, I think David has fallen off the walking machine again. And then he yells out for me and says something about a bat. So I’m thinking either Josey pup has done something horrible (like chewed something up she shouldn’t have, or thrown up, or crapped everywhere) or that we are being robbed and David is yelling for me to get the bat.
So I throw on a robe (because I sleep nude) and head downstairs. I immediately see Josey is in her kennel so I’m like “Oh shit, she must have REALLY fucked up” and David’s yelling about being bitten by the bat. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Until I come around the corner and there is a bat (the mammal) laying on the living room floor. And it all clicks. So he goes and washes his hand. I scoop up the little bat into a trashcan and put a towel over it to calm it down and my husband. I then go check on my husband. He has the tiniest cut on his left index finger. But it is there.
Now, even with as country as I am, I have never dealt with a bat bite. So I google what to do. I’m sure we gotta go to the hospital if nothing else. I check out the bat and it appears just fine – straight up normal bat. David doesn’t want it in the house so we elect to put it outside. Yeah…not our brightest moment.
So we load up and head to the ER clinic at 11:30 pm. I am tortured in the waiting room because they have friggin’ TWILIGHT playing. Like shoot me now. They finally call me back and ask me if I can go look for the bat because it needs to be tested for rabies. Duh. So I go back to the house and look, but yeah…that bat is long gone.
The ER clinic doesn’t have the stuff to treat for rabies, so they call the hospital to make sure they have the necessary stuff before sending us over there. And because they basically just hung out with us, they didn’t charge us anything. Thank goodness. SO, we load up and head to the hospital ER. At midnight. On the 4th of July. I just knew it was going to be a madhouse. I was pleasantly surprised to be honest. It was super quiet.
Anyways. We get to do the first round of Rabies treatment…which is the worst. He has to get 12 mL of rabies immune globulin injected into the bite site. Which doesn’t sound too terrible. Until you remember it’s on the tip of his index finger. There is no way to put all 12 mL of anything there. So it ends up taking EIGHTEEN separate injections throughout his finger, his hand, up his forearm to his elbow to get all of the rabies immune globulin in. I swear he looked like the absolute WORST junkie ever. And THEN he got the first rabies vaccine in the other arm. He has to get three more on a very specific schedule.
We didn’t get home until 3:30 am.
His 2nd vaccine had to be on Tuesday (July 7th), 3rd on Saturday (July 11th), and 4th on Saturday (July 18th). So Monday was a scramble between the VA and various doctors and the county health department to find a place he could get the 2nd vaccine the NEXT DAMN DAY. Yeah, we were a bit stressed to say the least. But the VA really came through for us. They found a place that we could get it, even if it’s an hour away. Sucks, but hey, we will do what we gotta do.
But back to the bat and how all of that happened.
My husband works out when I go to bed. We have a weight machine in our living room. On the pull down bar, he hangs his work out gloves. The bat was inside the left work out glove.
As best we can figure out is at some point, when we were coming and going outside to watch all the various fireworks that all the neighbors were setting off, the bat came inside with us looking to escape all the explosions, noise, and gunpowder that was outside. It then found the gloves, which are the best place for a little, terrified bat to hide. Well, that is, until a human hand enters said glove.
Here’s the cute lil bastard:
He’s only about the size of a mouse. Not big at all.
