Hi Battyinthemountains,

Oh my gosh your story just hit a chord with me. I feel so badly for you that there is a bat problem in your home. That is a nightmare. On the positive note, you are all vaccinated thank God!! With that kind of exposure never second guess your choice to vaccinate. I am glad your little ones are doing well and I hope they can eliminate the bats from your home quickly. Can you get the health department involved to move things quickly?

I found a strange bite on my wrist and ended up going through rig and the series of shots. They made me feel pretty lousy. The Rig was the worst, each shot caused lethargy and a terrible headache. But as you know, there are really no other options then to just wait and see if you get sick. Not a risk I was willing to take. I finished the shots just fine, but in the process of them I came down with a virus my son brought home. Sore throat and sick for a week. I thought I was getting rabies. But it passed.

I have something possibly going on with the nerves in my mouth that caused bad tooth pain. Seemed to coincide with the shots it happened a month later. I often wonder if it's residual effect of the shots I will never know. It was a rough decision to get the shots but I did not want to risk it.

Just be good to yourself, follow a good diet and allow your body to recover. Hopefully this will all be a distant memory for you all very soon.

Thank you. We were lucky enough to have a friends rental property to stay at during the whole bay exclusion process, so we haven’t had to deal with the bats for a couple of weeks.
I know getting the vaccine was the best for us, but hope that someday I’ll feel normal again.

I wanted to check in as I am two weeks out from the 4th shot of RabaVert. Last night I finally got some good rest, most nights I cannot sleep though the night without having fear of the bats re-entering our house (even though it's now closed off and as far as I know all bats have been excluded). My kids are also afraid of going into their rooms so now they sleep in our room. It's hard to see them go through this fear too.
I also get the jerky movements (myoclonus) when drifting off or trying to relax, but I don't let it bother me since I see it can be common for some of us after these shots.
As for other lingering effects... My body hurts. Back ache, arms ache, feet ache. My left foot especially. My tingling has not subsided, but is mostly in my left hand/arm. My right collarbone has ached since the final shot and sometimes it's hard to catch my breath. I still get the lump in the throat, but it's more when I'm in panic mode. I still have daily headaches that remind me of a dull hangover headache.

As of now I have to believe we caught this in time. A scary statistic I read is that 15% of bats being tested in my state are testing positive for rabies, which is up from a typical 1.5-8% depending on who you speak to.

I have also spoke to 3 doctors since the shots (two Epidemiologists and a local ER doctor), a family member who is a ER nurse, and our family pediatrician and they all say that at this point after the shots you can feel confident that you're in the clear. Failure rate of full course of vaccine in North America continues to be at 0. That has helped immensely.

Thanks for reading.

I also wanted to say that I got the HRIG 4 weeks ago and within the past week the left glute injection area has began feeling painful. Not sure why after all this time, but there is that too.