A Lincoln woman remembers her experience in finding a bat at her home

LINCOLN, Nb.

Deb Arends knows a lot about bats.

She knows that a single bat can eat a thousand mosquitoes in an hour, that she eats them in flight.

She knows that bats have to fall to fly, which is why they hang on the side of the house and prepare to do it.

And Arends knows exactly what it's like to wake up with a bat in his bed, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.

It was a Sunday morning last year in mid-August, at the height of the bats season, when Arends felt something at his side. She picked it up and threw it away. It was a bat.

So she shouted.

The bat – often described as a mouse with wings and teeth in a stapler – ended up hanging on the drapery of his room.

Arends received the grandchildren's butterfly net, captured the lethargic bat and placed it in a small plastic container.

She's showered. (After all, she had just met a bat in bed.) She left the captured bat on her porch and went out for breakfast.

Animal Control took the bat, had it tested and on Tuesday afternoon, Arends got the results. The bat was furious.

Arends immediately contacted his doctor and set an appointment for the next morning. Her doctor referred her to the Bryan East Specialist Clinic, where she started a series of two-week injections that would ensure she would not die of rabies.

Arends knew that it was not necessary to spoil a bat bite.

Experts recommend that people be vaccinated if they are in the same room with a bat, even if they are not sure whether the bat is infected with rabies, or if they have contact with a bat and that it has not been captured and tested. for rabies.

Even bat saliva in a cut, or accidentally rubbed in your eyes is dangerous.

Rabies is fatal. There is no cure. Without vaccines, you will die.

Shots in Lincoln are usually not available at a doctor's office. It's an event too rare for every doctor to carry the vaccine or immunoglobulin needed for treatment, said Celia Weskamp, ​​drug policy coordinator at Bryan Health.

For example, hospital clinics are generally the places where Lincoln residents turn to the vaccine series.

Arends was sent to the Bryan Specialist Clinic, where she waited several hours while the staff was receiving the medication.

Treatment consists of an immunoglobulin that strengthens the body's natural defenses, followed by rabies vaccines over the next two weeks.

"The immunoglobulin is human blood, as in a movie about vampires," said Arends.

Shooting is no longer the ordeal that they once were.

Arends was really tired and had pain at the injection site. But Arends, who has survived cancer, clbadifies health problems through this prism. "I'm a very energetic person and it's a bit depressed, but it was not that bad."

Arends had already seen bats in and around his central house in Lincoln. She found one dead in her furnace air filter once. She had a housekeeper arrested after a bat pbaded through the kitchen.

But a rabid bat in the bedroom requires the help of an expert. So Arends called the bat experts, who – for about $ 1,800 – sealed his attic, caulked and filled the potential entry points, installed a stainless steel chimney cap and installed a one-way tube for to allow the bats to fly, the house.

"I thought we were good."

But Arends still had two big surprises waiting for him this winter.

By the end of the fall, while she was releasing some of her Christmas decorations – Arends is an interior decorator who loves Christmas – she found a bat half dead , then two others. She discovered that an attic closet lined with cedar housed many bats.

The bat control company came back, found at least five other places where bats were entering and placed another tube.

But the bat guano stayed in this attic closet. Nobody really wants to clean the bat poop, Arends discovered. If this is the case, the cost is $ 2,000 or more, and his move was not covered by his home health insurance, which excludes contamination such as urine or toxic waste.

Histoplasmosis, an infection that affects the lungs, can be caused by the breathing of spores of a fungus that can develop in bat guano.

"Google, you do not want that," says Arends.

So Arends and a friend donned protective suits against hazardous materials, bought a disinfectant and cleaned the attic closet themselves. She threw away the vintage dolls and the evergreen trees, cleaning all the plastic boxes that could come in contact with a bat. And she plugged the cracks in the room with so much spray foam that the house could float in a flood.

But she did not need to be vaccinated against rabies because she still had the vaccination. And the second bat tested did not have rabies.

Then, around Christmas, Arends suffered another shock: the hospital bill for his six shots. She needed two immunoglobulins, which are concentrated antibodies to fight an infection, and four rabies vaccines.

Arends had googled the question of costs. She was expecting a big bill, maybe $ 500 per shot, probably several thousand dollars in total.

The bill was $ 11,968.29.

She was dismayed.

The Arends Insurance, the federal Medicare program for seniors, has paid the bulk of the bill. But Arends worries about other people with high deductibles or no insurance.

She heard about two children and a mother who needed to be vaccinated and who had a $ 30,000 bill.

She knows people who need more immunoglobulins and who have an individual bill of $ 14,000.

You do not negotiate with a hospital in advance about the cost of rabies vaccines, Arends said.

"You do not have a choice, you have to do it or you do not survive."

The average load for the series of four treatments is about $ 11,000, said Edgar Bumanis, director of public relations and marketing at Bryan Health, who provided information on the charges.

About two-thirds of the cost of treatment is related to immunoglobulin, administered at the first visit. It is allocated according to the weight of the patient and its cost varies between 4 000 and 14 000 dollars. The current rabies vaccine costs about $ 1,000 per vaccine and per administration, he said.

Bryan offers discounts and financial incentives that can significantly reduce the patient's liability, he said.

The state health and social services department is currently studying the 500 people it knows have been recommended for rabies vaccination since 2013.

This survey will confirm how many people received treatment and other information such as where they were treated, where they were vaccinated, the cost of injections and if they did not receive it, what were the obstacles, said Leah Bucco-White, a communication officer with the DHHS.

Arends now has a folder full of information about bats. His friends receive his bat gifts, like the book "It's not over," says the bat.

She has a big bat sticker on her mirror and she hung rubber sticks on her back porch for Halloween.

And one night, recently, she heard some noise in her attic. She hopes that the last of the bats ended her winter hibernation and flew away.

___

Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, http://www.journalstar.com

An AP member exchange shared by the Lincoln Journal Star.