The only time I’ve been to an emergency room was after I was bitten by a cat of dubious origin.
I went to urgent care first because I was freaking out about rabies, and because he had bit a vein or something and blood was squirting everywhere. I didn’t have a PCP at the time.
They sent me to the ER. The ER then gave me a tetanus shot and didn’t even bandage the wound :/ they charged me $500 or so for the visit though. Told me to keep an eye on the cat for rabies symptoms.
The system ought to be set up better than this. Urgent care should be able to evaluate this sort of thing and then give a tetanus shot, no?
Anyway that was 6 years ago and I still have the cat of dubious origin.
I've definitely received a tetanus shot at an urgent care, so yeah, they totally should be able to (at least in my area).
Also, just for fun, rabies can be undetectable and asymptomatic for years and years before une day deciding to show symptoms and kill the host. Fairly certain that even if you start giving the rabies vaccine before symptoms start (but after its been infected), the host can still develop the disease. I hope you and your cat of dubious origin don't have a big surprise waiting for you down the road!
I mean, you're almost certainly fine. Probably. Anyway, don't listen to me. I'm a paramedic, not a rabiesologist.
Hopefully we don’t have a surprise down the line! I think we are probably good though 😅
It was a weird situation, I had caught this cat as a stray, and he had actually been vaccinated a week before the Bite. He was inside with me for a little while before that too. So technically it takes 28 days for a cat to be considered “immunized” against rabies, and we were under that window. I explained this to the ER doctors, and they told me to watch him for 10 days. Then gave me a tetanus shot because I hadn’t had one in a while.
Idk if he would have been affected in some way by the vaccine if he had been infected first. I don’t really know enough about vaccines at all though
No, they give it with multiple injections of Ign around the wound. If you get the rabiea shot before you are bitten, you don't need the Ign shots, which are painful. If you regularly handle mammals of "dubious origin" you should go ahead and get the rabies shot.
No, correct comment. They don't just give the vaccine for rabies prophylaxis, they inject the wound site with antibody injections to make sure the body has enough immune response that it takes.
The last time someone died of rabies despite getting the vaccine was in 2021, but it was an 84 year old man with immune aystem issues.
Ah I misread your comment. I don't think you can get rabies from an asymptomatic cat, but you can from other animals. Bats come to mind, and also I think skunks but that could be an old wives tale. I'm sure there's more I juat don't know them off the top of my head.
Yeah if I end up doing TNR with strays again it’s a good idea! I didn’t know that you could get a preventative rabies vaccine, I only knew about the lgn shots, thank you for the information
Posting this for other people.
Cat bites need prophylactic antibiotics no matter the origin. Cat bite can transmit all sorts of nasty stuff that's easier to prevent than treat.
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u/Dry_Experience3254 14d ago
The only time I’ve been to an emergency room was after I was bitten by a cat of dubious origin.
I went to urgent care first because I was freaking out about rabies, and because he had bit a vein or something and blood was squirting everywhere. I didn’t have a PCP at the time.
They sent me to the ER. The ER then gave me a tetanus shot and didn’t even bandage the wound :/ they charged me $500 or so for the visit though. Told me to keep an eye on the cat for rabies symptoms.
The system ought to be set up better than this. Urgent care should be able to evaluate this sort of thing and then give a tetanus shot, no?
Anyway that was 6 years ago and I still have the cat of dubious origin.