LemmycautioN
06-30-2008, 08:39 AM
Sorry about the long post, but I've been replying to others' posts for months and have never written one myself. I've been having a tough time lately and I thought I would write this. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this and reply.
I was first diagnosed with an anxiety disorder when I was 17, about ten years ago. Since then I've had the typical on-again-off-again struggle with anxiety. I had been off medication with minimal anxiety until about 6 months ago. I went to visit my family in Boston this January and I started to have relatively severe health related anxiety. Later that January, on my way back, I had a full fledged panic attack in Chicago. I came pretty close to going to the ER there and I was convinced that I had sepsis (I had a wound on my finger with stitches).
Since I've been back home I've been checked out for all sorts of things. I had an ECG, heart stress test with ultrasound. I've been examined by two ENTs, a cardiologist, and my regular doctor. Everything has come back more or less normal. I went to a psychiatrist and started taking Celexa (I had been on SSRI's for years but stopped a few years ago). My main symptoms are dizziness, lightheadedness, loss of appetite, and insomnia. I've worried about MS, diabetes, cancer (in about 8 different forms), rare heart disorders, rare neurological disorders, sudden blindness etc etc etc.
Things started to get better last month until one day. I saw a raccoon out on my back porch at 2 in the afternoon. She was eating cat food and I went outside. She was drooling while she was eating, but aside from that seemed normal. After she ran away I picked up the water dish and the food dish. When I got to the sink I realized that the hand I picked the water dish up with had a cut on it. I washed my hand thoroughly and immediately looked up rabies on the internet. It seems that everything that I read made me feel worse. I read that there hasn't ever been a rabid raccoon found in Washington State, or any of the states that border it, and the only 2 rabies cases in this state in the last 20 years has come from bats. I called the department of health for my county and talked to the rabies expert on hand. I went through the story and she said that she won't recommend the post exposure shots saying that even if the raccoon did have rabies my experience didn't constitute exposure. Her assurances didn't help too much so I called the public nurse from the neighboring county and went through the same story. She was even more convinced that I was being paranoid and even said something like, "If I was bitten by the raccoon I wouldn't even get a shot because we don't get rabid raccoons in this area." She went on to add that there is no way that I could get rabies even if that raccoon had been rabid. As confident as she was I wasn't totally satisfied so I called the rabies expert from the other neighboring county and she said the same thing as the other nurses, she wouldn't clear me for the post-exposure vaccination because I didn't have what they consider to be a rabies exposure. She even said that she would talk to the state authority on rabies and call me back to be absolutely sure. She did call me back and was even more confident saying, "You would have a better chance of winning the lotto and being struck by lightning at the same time".
I felt fine for a few days but recently the anxiety about having rabies has come back full force. One of the main things I'm worried about is this: the earliest symptoms of rabies are flu-like symptoms and the incubation period can be from 1 month to 1 year. If I get sick within the next 11 months - which I don't doubt I will - I'm going to freak out about rabies. What makes that even worse is that another rabies symptom is anxiety. Since this whole thing happened 3 weeks ago I'm basically past the point of no return and the DOH didn't even clear me for the post-exposure treatment but I can't get my mind off of rabies. I did a count of the diseases that I've believed that I've had in the last six months and I counted 24 different known diseases, some of which I mentioned above. The rabies is by far the worst and I can't get my mind off of it. One of the nurses said that if I contracted rabies in this situation it would be about 10 firsts in terms of rabies.
I saw the same raccoon (at least I think it was the same one, she has a distinctive dark spot of the top of her head) and she wasn't drooling and seemed totally fine. This made me feel a lot better because if she had rabies then and was drooling she should be either dead or extremely ill at this point. Seeing her made me feel better, but now I'm worried that it might be a different raccoon with the same unusual fur pattern. As I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep my mind was running through all of these what-ifs. I woke up with anxiety about 2 hours after I went to sleep - just like 2 weeks ago when I first started panicking about rabies - and I decided to write this. I don't really know what I'm looking for in terms of responses but I really just wanted to get this all out. I've told this story to rabies experts and doctors and they all told me that I have nothing to worry about, and since I have a known anxiety disorder (with severe hypochondria in case you haven't already noticed) I thought I'd post it here.
Thanks everyone
I was first diagnosed with an anxiety disorder when I was 17, about ten years ago. Since then I've had the typical on-again-off-again struggle with anxiety. I had been off medication with minimal anxiety until about 6 months ago. I went to visit my family in Boston this January and I started to have relatively severe health related anxiety. Later that January, on my way back, I had a full fledged panic attack in Chicago. I came pretty close to going to the ER there and I was convinced that I had sepsis (I had a wound on my finger with stitches).
Since I've been back home I've been checked out for all sorts of things. I had an ECG, heart stress test with ultrasound. I've been examined by two ENTs, a cardiologist, and my regular doctor. Everything has come back more or less normal. I went to a psychiatrist and started taking Celexa (I had been on SSRI's for years but stopped a few years ago). My main symptoms are dizziness, lightheadedness, loss of appetite, and insomnia. I've worried about MS, diabetes, cancer (in about 8 different forms), rare heart disorders, rare neurological disorders, sudden blindness etc etc etc.
Things started to get better last month until one day. I saw a raccoon out on my back porch at 2 in the afternoon. She was eating cat food and I went outside. She was drooling while she was eating, but aside from that seemed normal. After she ran away I picked up the water dish and the food dish. When I got to the sink I realized that the hand I picked the water dish up with had a cut on it. I washed my hand thoroughly and immediately looked up rabies on the internet. It seems that everything that I read made me feel worse. I read that there hasn't ever been a rabid raccoon found in Washington State, or any of the states that border it, and the only 2 rabies cases in this state in the last 20 years has come from bats. I called the department of health for my county and talked to the rabies expert on hand. I went through the story and she said that she won't recommend the post exposure shots saying that even if the raccoon did have rabies my experience didn't constitute exposure. Her assurances didn't help too much so I called the public nurse from the neighboring county and went through the same story. She was even more convinced that I was being paranoid and even said something like, "If I was bitten by the raccoon I wouldn't even get a shot because we don't get rabid raccoons in this area." She went on to add that there is no way that I could get rabies even if that raccoon had been rabid. As confident as she was I wasn't totally satisfied so I called the rabies expert from the other neighboring county and she said the same thing as the other nurses, she wouldn't clear me for the post-exposure vaccination because I didn't have what they consider to be a rabies exposure. She even said that she would talk to the state authority on rabies and call me back to be absolutely sure. She did call me back and was even more confident saying, "You would have a better chance of winning the lotto and being struck by lightning at the same time".
I felt fine for a few days but recently the anxiety about having rabies has come back full force. One of the main things I'm worried about is this: the earliest symptoms of rabies are flu-like symptoms and the incubation period can be from 1 month to 1 year. If I get sick within the next 11 months - which I don't doubt I will - I'm going to freak out about rabies. What makes that even worse is that another rabies symptom is anxiety. Since this whole thing happened 3 weeks ago I'm basically past the point of no return and the DOH didn't even clear me for the post-exposure treatment but I can't get my mind off of rabies. I did a count of the diseases that I've believed that I've had in the last six months and I counted 24 different known diseases, some of which I mentioned above. The rabies is by far the worst and I can't get my mind off of it. One of the nurses said that if I contracted rabies in this situation it would be about 10 firsts in terms of rabies.
I saw the same raccoon (at least I think it was the same one, she has a distinctive dark spot of the top of her head) and she wasn't drooling and seemed totally fine. This made me feel a lot better because if she had rabies then and was drooling she should be either dead or extremely ill at this point. Seeing her made me feel better, but now I'm worried that it might be a different raccoon with the same unusual fur pattern. As I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep my mind was running through all of these what-ifs. I woke up with anxiety about 2 hours after I went to sleep - just like 2 weeks ago when I first started panicking about rabies - and I decided to write this. I don't really know what I'm looking for in terms of responses but I really just wanted to get this all out. I've told this story to rabies experts and doctors and they all told me that I have nothing to worry about, and since I have a known anxiety disorder (with severe hypochondria in case you haven't already noticed) I thought I'd post it here.
Thanks everyone