My dog is fine, though, which is the most important thing to me. The raccoons scratched my arm kinda bad and my legs are covered in scratches. My doctor can’t be sure if the raccoons had saliva on their claws, and wants me to get rabies shots just in case. She sent me to an ER because she can’t get the shots in our area.
I’ve been at the hospital for 3 hours and haven’t been seen.
It’s after my bedtime and I have to wake up at 5am for work…
I’m not having a good time.
Call your lawyer and sue the shit out of those raccoons. I hear they’re rich.
Omfg you right. You think this guy would help?
He’s a tanuki/raccoon dog, not a raccoon
The law does not make such distinctions!
In Florida, you have to use the trash can you were assigned at birth.
Choose your capitalist fate!
Path A: medical bankruptcy.
Path B: incurable disease and certain horrible death.
Quite a system the wealthy have built for us. I’ll be terribly disappointed if the book doesn’t end with a bunch of guillotines.
*American fate
Capitalist was correct. Look in Europe, the social health system is non stop attacked and set in danger. More and more, capitalist system wants health to be a an open market
Same in Canada. Every year we hear of at least one province debating privatizing healthcare as though thats gonna fix our problems and not just make it exponentially worse.
Yeah, well health shouldn’t be a market in the first place.
The 38 OECD economies are all capitalist. Only 1 lacks universal healthcare.
Meh free healthcare is in our constitution, just like many other countries in Europe. The only place experiencing this problem to this degree is the United States. It’s not a capitalist problem at all.
some friendly advice, maybe don’t cite your explicitly socialist constitution when explaining that capitalism isn’t ackshually the problem.
Socialism in EU may not have the meaning you think it has, it’s very distinct from communism. It can be called social democracy, like Bernie Sanders, maybe.
For example, the previous French president was from the French Socialist Party and the current primer minister of Spain is from the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, and they are not radical lefties.
In this case, socialism means accepting the free market capitalism for the efficiency it may bring to the economy, but with good regulation and, mainly what the USA lack, a good social safety net (free healthcare, free education etc…).This is why we need better education in the US.
Also, this is why we can’t have healthcare. We don’t know why we deserve it.
I was talking to a person once about single-payer Canadian healthcare. And she said, but what if someone doesn’t work? Should they still get it?
[I mean, yes.]
I said, how come you don’t ask that question about cops and firefighters? You don’t say, well if someone doesn’t work, should the firefighter’s come to their house if there is a fire? We have single-payer police insurance and single-payer firefighter insurance.
But after the fire, you’re on your own!
America! Fuck, yeah.
Socialist constitution means they have in there provisions to impede the private ownership of the means of production.
Wow. This is the stupidest thing I’ll read all week. Thanks, friend!
some friendly advice, maybe you should read more
He said without a hint of irony.
I’ll also be disappointed
So would I
Path C: get fired without cause because you needed to take a day off to recover.
Path C: Go out biting some people who have it coming.
I’m sorry this happened to you, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. By the time clinical signs of rabies present, you’re already a “dead man walking” so to say. I hope you and your dog are able to recover swiftly!
Exactly. I don’t want rabies. And thank you! My dog didn’t realize we were being attacked and wanted to play with the critters. Made it harder to get him inside. I didn’t even realize I was injured until some time later when I noticed scratches on me. Adrenaline is crazy.
Been there. Happened to me in grad school but I woke up to a bat on my leg. Thing with bats ks you can’t tell if they bit you because their teeth leave little baby pinpricks that look like damn near everything else that bites, including mosquitoes.
I got a bill for $13,000. Basically 1000 for every shot to the ass they gave me. I had to pay it from my student loans. Yay America.
🎶America! Fuck yeah!
Making you poor for
Basic medical attention!
🎶America! Fuck yeah!
Making you poor for
Basic medical attention!
Syllabic perfection, I’m impressed! Well done!
I sung it a bunch of times to make sure it felt right.
I would have graduated, got a job overseas, and just left the debt in America.
Heck, you can take all these $$$, fly to a decent country visa-free, get a rabies shot and a lavish vacation. Why TF Americans don’t ddo that is beyond me.
If you capture the bat, they can test the bat for rabies instead of treating you.
And leave that poor bat with $13,000 of medical debt!?
The rabies test requires decapitation, so don’t worry, the debt went to the bat’s widow.
What a bunch of assholes.
$1500 or get rabies. Home of the free indeed lmao
Man I’ve NEVER heard of a raccoon attack that’s fucked up. I’ve interacted with a million raccoons (including one that broke into my kitchen once) and they have never come close to attacking me. Sounds like they might indeed have rabies. Glad you and your pup sound ok. Just call in sick if you need the sleep tomorrow.
These raccoons were young and seemed scared. They made some wicked noises though. I stayed inside for as long as possible after that. I didn’t know if a mama raccoon was hanging around
Medicare for all. Not only would your visit be free, but you’ll be paying less in taxes than handing blank checks to billionaires through for-profit insurance companies. That regularly deny your claims.
My tired brain read this as you had to pay the raccoons $1500 or they would give you rabies. Can’t even go into the woods without being extorted.
Guess they took pointers from this dude
The problem is that if you pay them, all the other shit heads expect to be paid. The ticks will make you pay $2000 to not be infected with alpha gal and Lyme’s disease.
I just got the rabies series of vaccines.
Bill was $9800. After insurance it was $285.
I was advised to wait until I got out of the US to get the Rabies booster series. Ended up paying around $120 USD for all 3 shots. Checkmate, capitalists!
Oh damn, I got the rabies vaccine when I worked part time at a vet school because they offered it. They were like “Uh but you’re IT, you don’t really need it, so you could skip the hassle…” and I was like “Why would I turn down an opportunity to get a vaccine? You’re paying for it, right? Reprogramming my immune system is awesome, sign me up!”
No wonder they looked annoyed, LMAO.
Uh but you’re IT, you don’t really need it
“You severely underestimate our users…”
Oh wow
Wow that is just extortionate. How long is the vaccine valid for?
Umm I can’t actually remember. I think it’s something like 1-5 years.
Even at it’s longest, that’s about $2000 a year - that is still crazy.
Yeah it’s crazy how corporations just extort you when the alternative is death.
No offense, but you’ll probably be waiting a long time. ERs typically have to deal with many simultaneous crises and you aren’t an emergent situation.
Some urgent care centers might have a rabies vaccine on hand.
Yup, rabies vaccine is something that can wait to make an appointment next day. It’s incubation period is usually a couple of months, or a week in the extreme cases, so a day or two won’t make a significant difference. Not something an ER will triage first.
Go to sleep, call your work first thing in the morning, and make an appointment where they have the vaccine available. I doubt your boss won’t let you take a day to get a rabies vaccine, but if he does, tell him you will bite him if you start showing symptoms at work, ha ha.
The vaccine, from what I’ve read, is commonly only available at ERs. And you can’t make appointments at ERs.
Ah, shit. Best of luck to OP then.
Extremes? Its been documented to incubate for over 20+ years
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3424805/
But your right its normally much faster than 20+ years. 31-90 days is the average.
Only in the US is it they expensive.
Otherwise infuriating and time-consuming… Perhaps everywhere. But really, rabies is not! something to mess around with. Even with the smallest chance.
I had a similar situation happen to me actually.
The rabies shot sucks but the most annoying part is returning for the follow-ups. The tetanus booster I had to get was much much more painful.
Good luck, sending positive vibes your way!
I had my first shots broken up into 4 injections. One in each arm and leg. It hurt so fucking bad. I got a tetanus booster last year after I got bad oil burns, and it didn’t hurt nearly this bad. It was probably the burns distracting me then, though
That really sucks, but they used to give them all to you in the stomach, so at least you avoided that.
On the positive side, you are now one of an elite group of those who have a raccoon attack story.
Not only that, but a raccoon gang. That’s like an initiation into the raccoon underworld, full of human trash smugglers.
And lived to tell about it
That’s a helluva expensive shot. I mean, you should definitely get it, but nobody should have to pay that much for it. I guess that’s USA…
That’s just the copays for all the shots. I have no idea how much of the vaccines will be covered
What the fuck is your copay? There are only like four shots for the vaccine.
Post exposure shots should be covered by nearly every insurance. The preexposure ones are not.
The shots are a lot cheaper than dying of rabies, which is often done in a hospital.
die in a hospital? In this economy? No thank you, I’d rather die at home.
A coworker of mine says, “If I’m meant to be in a hospital, I’ll wake up there.”
“Or die at home from a curable illness.”
If you get rabies, you might as well elect to not be hospitalized. What’s the point of trying to stretch out your life for 2 or 3 more days of agony?
Seriously, a couple years ago I asked an ER doctor to just let me die. I have insurance but the issue was air medevacc.
It’s bankruptcy expensive.
a couple years ago I asked an ER doctor to just let me die
Did they let you die?
He hasn’t answered yet, that’s not a good sign.
Don’t be silly, you can’t afford to die there either.
