You Know What’s Worse Than Finding a Bat in Your Blanket?

It’s almost Halloween – what better time to share my bat story!

It was an ordinary weekday morning. A school day. I was still fighting off grogginess as I made my way down to our living room to enjoy the cup of coffee my husband had waiting. Waving bye to my daughter as she left for school, I curled up on the couch for few minutes of scrolling TikTok before really starting my day.

It was a little chilly, so I grabbed a blanket, and pulled it over me.

Our dog, who is usually Velcroed to my side, had decided to hang out in his crate instead. An odd choice for him, and one that, looking back, probably would’ve changed how the morning unfolded.

I took a few sips of coffee and started watching silly dog videos on my phone.

That’s when I noticed the weird audio, kinda chirp-like noise.

At first, I thought it was coming from the video I was watching. You know, how sometimes you’re scrolling and the sound from one video gets mixed up with another? Like that.

Annoying, but no big deal. I swiped out of the app, that would surely fix it.

Well, the video stopped.

But the chirping did not.

Ummmmmmmm.

I looked at my phone. Nope, no video playing. Blank screen.
I set the phone down.

Still in a morning-daze, I slowly realized the chirping sound was coming from near my phone-holding hand that was resting on the blanket. Deep breath.

I tentatively lifted the blanket, peeking underneath.

What I saw was something large and gray.

And I swear, the world did a cartwheel.

THERE WAS A BAT ON ME.

Not near me. Not flying around the room.ON. ME.

Under my blanket. Sitting on my T-shirt. Right there on my ribcage.

What happened next is difficult to describe because approximately four things happened all at once.

My hand reached for the bat and flung it across the room. My mouth let out a sound I didn’t know I could make. And my entire body leap-launched itself off that couch in a burst that would impress Olympic judges.

It was like an out-of-body experience. My brain was still working on the whole there’s a bat on me situation while the rest of me had already taken emergency action.

And then I started jumping.

Not running. Jumping.

Really, it was more like frog-hop-thumping a beeline through our 1970s house. Each landing making a resonant THUD that echoed even to the basement.

Meanwhile, my husband was in his favorite chair at the opposite end of the house at the time, peacefully enjoying his own morning coffee.

Until, apparently, all hell broke loose.

He came running, intercepting his wild woman wife crash-landing in the kitchen.

I’m sure the sight was something.

Still jumping around, I wildly pointed toward the living room, trying to explain what had just happened. Unfortunately, my mouth would not cooperate.

“BAT! ON ME! I TOUCHED IT! THERE’S A BAT!”

Or something along those lines.

Eventually, he figured out what I was trying to say.

Meanwhile, our college-age son, startled by the thud-jumps echoing through the basement, came up to see what was going on.

I told him to get his tennis racket. And bless him, he did. Came right back, racket in hand, ready to take on a bat for his mom.

Thankfully, no racket was needed.

My husband found the bat pretty close to where I’d tossed it, not flying around or doing much of anything. He trapped it under an upside-down trash can, then took it out to the garage for a final encounter with his shoe.

(Remember that shoe. It’s going to be important later.)

Rabies Enters the Chat

Once the immediate bat emergency was under control, I went into the bathroom to inspect my stomach, the area where it had been sitting.

At first glance, I thought my skin looked normal. But almost like magic, while I was watching, a red splotch started to develop on my skin.

Ummm, what?!

I started running through the possibilities. The bat had been sitting on my shirt. My thin pajama shirt. And I’d touched it with my bare hand.

I hadn’t felt a bite. But could it have scratched my hand? Or scratched me through my shirt? Could something have happened without me noticing?

And come on, the bat had only been on me for two minutes. Surely that wasn’t long enough to be a big deal, right? But then, it was lethargic and kinda acting sick. Oof.

I started Googling.

Which, as we all know, is an excellent way to calm yourself down during an emergency.

I learned that bat bites can be incredibly small. So tiny you might not even see them. Or feel them.

Great.

I called my doctor’s office, explained what had happened (they could hardly believe it!), and was told to head to the emergency room for an evaluation. That’s where they keep the rabies vaccine if it came to that.

So much for my relaxing morning.

My daughter had a half day of school that day because of exams, so when she walked through the door I got her up to speed on the morning’s adventures.

We got in the car and started the 20-minute drive to the Butterworth ER in downtown GR, chatting about what was going on. Turns out that neither of us knew much about rabies.

I mean, we knew dogs get rabies shots because getting rabies was bad. And we shared some vague cartoonish idea of animals foaming at the mouth.

That was about it.

So my daughter started Googling and reading her discoveries aloud.

Apparently, rabies can cause excessive saliva.

Lovely.

Muscle spasms.

Terrific.

And then she got to the part about what happens once symptoms develop.

Rabies is nearly always fatal. A 100% chance of death if rabies symptoms develop.

Excuse me?

Suddenly, the whole situation felt a lot less funny.

I had gone from drinking coffee on my couch to wondering whether I had been exposed to one of the deadliest infections on the planet.

And I didn’t even know if the bat had bitten me.

Welcome to the ER

We checked in at the emergency room, and two things surprised me right away: how different it looked from the ERs on TV, and how quickly they brought us back.

They put us in a little curtained-off treatment space, separated from everyone else’s emergencies by just a thin piece of fabric.

Well, those curtains don’t do much to block sound.

While we waited, conversations from the neighbors drifted into our room. It was nothing special until we heard two people talking about rabies.

Hello, rabies?!

It sounded like somebody else in the ER had a rabies encounter that needed to be dealt with right away, too. And then came the stories. Bad ones. Including one about somebody who had died.

I remember thinking, Wow. There must be a lot of rabies cases going around Grand Rapids!

After an hour, our nurse finally came in. He was a friendly guy, and we got to talking.

I mentioned the conversation we’d overheard and how crazy it was that rabies exposure seemed to be trending that day.

The nurse glanced at the other staff member in our space, then back at me with a slightly sheepish expression.

“That might have been us that you heard.”

Oh.

Apparently, the ER staff can see incoming cases on monitors in the hallways, and sometimes they chat about them. They just hadn’t realized how well those conversations carried through the curtains.

Whoops.

We had a good laugh about that. I may have suggested that we stick to discussing patients with better outcomes.

Next I got to tell my bat story all over again. They could hardly believe I’d found one under my blanket. But because it had been so close to me, they recommended I get rabies post-exposure treatment.

Of course, the decision to be treated was mine. But between my doctor’s recommendation, the close encounter, and everything my daughter had just read to me in the car, I wasn’t particularly interested in gambling.

If they thought I should get the shots, I was getting the shots, whatever that meant.

I learned I’d need four doses over two weeks. And those doses were delivered on a strict schedule. (Your dose days are counted as day 0, day 3, day 7, and day 14.)

But because I hadn’t previously been vaccinated against rabies, I also needed something to protect me while the vaccine kicked in, and that came in the form of something called rabies immune globulin.

Unlike a regular vaccine, which is a quick shot in the arm, immune globulin is a whole production.

The amount you get depends on your body weight, and as much as possible, it’s injected around the area of exposure.

In my case, that meant my rib cage.

The nurse explained he’d split it into two injections, one above the spot where the bat had been and one below.

I stood there holding up my shirt while he got to work.

And just to let you know, this wasn’t a quick little poke. There was a LOT of fluid going in, and it took awhile.

I concentrated on my breathing.

One injection down.

Then the next.

Because of the angle, I couldn’t really see where the injection was going. Which was fine by me.

After the second injection, he told me to hold still and just wait.

I figured maybe I was bleeding a little, and he needed to put pressure on it.

Nope.

“All done, but your injection hole is oozing.”

And before I could stop myself, out came:

“Well, that’s what every lady wants to hear!”

We all cracked up.

Apparently, when you pump that much fluid into an area, sometimes it takes a minute for everything to settle down.

Who knew?

After that, I got the actual rabies vaccine in my arm, which was a piece of cake by comparison.

All told, we were cleared to leave for home a few hours after arriving. I had survived the first round.

And I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing.

Well, relatively speaking.

Just Get the Bat Tested

Before leaving the hospital, the staff had given me instructions for my follow-up shots. But they also mentioned something encouraging: If we still had the bat, we could have it tested for rabies. If it came back negative, I might be able to skip the rest of the vaccine series.

Now THAT sounded promising.

Since my husband had saved the bat in a plastic Meijer bag in our garage, I called the Kent County Health Department and explained what had happened.

When I told the woman that the bat had actually been on me, she didn’t hesitate.

Yes, that definitely qualified for testing.

All we had to do was drop it off at the Kent County Animal Shelter. Easy enough.

My husband and I drove over with our little plastic bag of bat, making it just before they closed at 7 PM.

The woman at the counter was very nice, although she asked my husband several times whether he was absolutely sure the bat was dead. (Apparently, people sometimes bring in bats that are merely stunned often enough to warrant this double-check!)

My husband assured her that our bat was quite dead.

Unfortunately, we’d missed that day’s pickup for the testing facility. The bat would have to wait until tomorrow. And with the lab backed up, we might not get results until Monday.

Which meant I’d probably still need my Saturday vaccine.

Fine. No big deal. At least we’d know soon.

Then Friday morning rolled around. Looking at my phone, I noticed a missed call from the health department and immediately called back.

This was it!

Had the bat tested negative? Could I cancel the rest of my shots?

Not exactly, the woman on the end of the line was telling me. She had bad news.

For a moment, I thought she’s was telling me that the bat DID have rabies. But no. That wasn’t it.

She explained that the lab had been unable to test the bat at all because its brain was too badly damaged.

And that’s how I learned another important fact in rabies testing: the lab needs a usable section of the bat’s brain to test it.

I had absolutely no idea.

Later that night, I told my husband that the health department had called back with the “we can’t test it” results.

And that’s when he told me something. He’d wanted to be extra sure the bat was dead.

So after killing it, he’d given it one more good whack with the shoe.

And that was that whack that made the bat definitely dead. And definitely untestable.

I mean, come on.

I couldn’t even be mad at him. I burst out laughing. This was turning into a comedy of errors and he was just trying to rid us of the bat and neither of us had ever heard of the usable brain-tissue requirement.

But that extra smack meant there would be no negative test result to set me free.

The rest of my vaccine series was officially happening.

The Great Rabies Vaccine Scavenger Hunt

You would think that once a hospital starts you on a treatment plan, getting the remaining doses would be relatively straightforward.

You’d be wrong. At least, that was my experience.

When I left the ER, I’d been given a packet explaining the vaccination schedule where to go for the remaining doses.

There was an infusion center listed that looked promising, but my next shot was due on Saturday. And the infusion center wasn’t open on Saturdays.

So I started calling urgent care centers on the list.

Nope. They didn’t have the vaccine.

Nope. Neither did the next one.

Or the next.

Apparently, rabies vaccine isn’t something every medical facility keeps sitting around.

Eventually, I figured out that the only reliable place to get my Saturday dose in Grand Rapids was back at the emergency room.

Fantastic.

I called ahead and asked whether there was a time of day when the ER tended to be less busy. The woman said mornings were usually better, before things started piling up.

So Saturday morning, bright and early, we showed up at 7 AM.

Let me tell you, Saturday morning at the ER is a very different experience from a Wednesday afternoon.

The waiting room was packed with people who appeared to be dealing with the after-affects of Friday night.

People were vomiting. People were crying and moaning. And then there were the other bodily fluids.

It was not a pleasant place to spend a Saturday morning.

And there I was, feeling perfectly fine, just waiting for my scheduled shot in the arm.

Of course, I wasn’t an emergency, so I waited. And waited some more.

I was told that the vaccine has to be brought to the appropriate temperature before they could give it to me. More waiting.

When I finally got called back, the actual injection took approximately two seconds.

So the score card was now: Two hours at the ER. Two seconds for the shot. But hey, dose #2 was done.

Next up: Dose #3 (Day 07)

I think this would have been pretty smooth if I’d been in Grand Rapids. The problem? I was going to be in Traverse City that week.

So now I had to figure out how to get my next dose in a different part of Michigan.

After some phone tag with with the Grand Traverse County Health Department, I was directed to an urgent care center that would have the vaccine available on the day I needed it.

And would you believe it?

That appointment went beautifully. Quick check-in. Quick shot. No drama.

I almost didn’t know what to do with myself. Thank you, Munson.

Score card: Three doses down. One to go.

Surely the last one would be easy. I was a pro at this now.

The Shot That Was Right There, But I Couldn’t Have

My final vaccine was due on day 14, a Wednesday. Dose #4.

I was back in Grand Rapids, and this time I had an actual appointment at the infusion center at Blodgett Hospital.

I’d called the day before, confirmed they had my order, and schedule my shot for 3:15.

Excellent.

Except things started going sideways before I even got inside. Construction made finding the entrance an adventure. And when I finally located where to go, the automated parking gate wouldn’t go up to let me enter.

I found myself talking to the little voice coming out of the parking machine, trying to explain the situation.

Eventually, I made it inside, walked the hospital maze, checked in, and somehow found my way to actual waiting room for the place I needed to be.

After a bit, a woman stuck her head out of a frosted-window door and told me there was a problem with my order.

The day before, it had been in their system. She saw it. But now it was gone, and because it had originated in the ER, she couldn’t seem to track it down.

I was confused. I had my paperwork. I was there on the correct day. They knew exactly which vaccine I needed.

And here’s the kicker.

They had the vaccine.

She had been bringing it up to temperature so she could give it to me. It was right there, on the other side of the door, but without a valid order, she couldn’t give it to me.

I asked what I was supposed to do. Could I come back tomorrow? Would that mess up the schedule? Wasn’t I supposed to get this shot on day 14?

She wasn’t sure, and I was getting increasingly frustrated. I’d spent two weeks jumping through hoops to get these shots on time, and now, on the last day, I was standing in a hospital that had the vaccine but couldn’t give it to me because of a computer problem.

I was close to tears by this point.

I knew she was just following the rules, but what on earth was I supposed to do?

Then, out of the blue and just when I was about to give up, she casually mentions that she’s found a dose at an urgent care in Grandville. They were holding it for me.

It took a minute for it to sink in: I was standing in East Grand Rapids. At a hospital that had the vaccine. But I needed to drive across town to get the same vaccine somewhere else? Yep.

Because, she explained, the infusion center needed a valid order to administer medication, while urgent care operated under different rules.

Still. This whole thing was absurd.

But I got back in my car anyway, drove 20 minutes to Grandville, and got my shot without any trouble.

And just like that, I was done.

Final Score Card: 4 out of 4 doses. Multiple medical facilities. Two emergency room visits. A trip to Traverse City. Countless phone calls.

And one thoroughly squished bat.

I was officially finished with rabies stuff.

Or so I thought.

The Most Expensive Cup of Coffee I’ve Ever Had

There’s one more part of this story, and it’s a big reason I decided to write the whole thing down.

When I first told my team about the bat encounter, one of my coworkers made an offhand comment about how expensive rabies treatment is.

That was news to me. Nobody at my doctor’s office, the ER, or the health department had brought it up. I didn’t have time to look it up while the whole thing was happening, either. I have health insurance, so I figured it probably wouldn’t be too terrible.

Then I found a Reddit post from someone who’d received rabies treatment at the same Grand Rapids ER. Their bill, before insurance, was over $10,000.

TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS?

For rabies shots? Surely that couldn’t be right. Except it was.

On day 14, the statement from my first ER visit arrived.

The hospital had billed more than $12,000.

About $10,000 of that was for the rabies immune globulin, remeber that stuff oozing from my injection hole?

My second ER visit was billed at around $1,200 and the other vaccine appointments were billed at around $650 apiece.

Thankfully, my insurance covered a significant portion, but even then, when all was said and done, I was still out approximately $3,000.

I lost three thousand dollars all because I sat down on my couch with a cup of coffee and a blanket.

A Few Things I Wish I’d Known

At the end of the day, I’m grateful that I could get the treatments and that I have insurance. Even though it was a giant, expensive pain, I’d do it again.

I learned more about bats, rabies, and the healthcare system during those two weeks than I ever expected to know.

I do wish I’d known about the cost going in, and about the brain-tissue bat thing.

Rabies is not something you mess around with. Once clinical symptoms appear, the disease is almost always fatal.

And since I’d rather you not have to learn these things the way I did, I’m sharing this crazy story with everyone.

Side note: we still don’t know how the bat got into our house. We think it flew in the front door while we were letting the dog out one night, after dark. So now, just to be safe, we only take the dog out through the garage at night, just to prevent against random winged visitors curling up in our blankets.

LESSONS LEARNED

Don’t brush off a bat encounter. Bat bites can be tiny, and you might not even feel one. If you’ve had direct contact with a bat, call your doctor or health department right away. Don’t wait for symptoms.

Save the bat if you can do so safely. It may be possible to test it for rabies and spare yourself more shots. But the brain needs to be in good enough shape for testing. Call animal control or your health department for instructions before handling it.

It’s more than one shot. If you’ve never had a rabies vaccine, treatment usually involves immune globulin plus four vaccine doses over two weeks.

Finding the shots can be a hassle. Not every clinic stocks the vaccine. Call ahead, confirm they have it, and make sure you can get each dose on schedule. If something goes wrong, ask a medical professional what to do.

The bill might be a doozy. Ask about insurance, costs, and where you can get follow-up shots for less.

There’s a vaccine you can get ahead of time. It’s mainly for people at higher risk of rabies exposure. You’d still need medical care after an encounter, but fewer shots and no immune globulin.

And finally, be prepared to coordinate your own care. Keep your paperwork, make the calls, and double-check everything. I learned that one the hard way. I had wrongly assumed that once the ER gave me a treatment schedule, the rest would more or less fall into place.

But I can’t help wondering how someone else might have managed, especially someone without the time, transportation, or flexibility to chase down appointments all over Michigan.

As for me, I’m happy to report that I finished my treatment and haven’t had any more bat encounters.

And, my husband still makes me coffee.

But you can darn well bet that I shake out blankets now before cozying up.