7/20/11

Today I learned about the procedures regarding rabies - 1st hand

I got home yesterday afternoon, saw the garbage was full and took it out to the closest dumpster.  When I threw my garbage in I startled a wild cat and it jumped out and scratched me, drawing blood. Since I just started working in our municipality's veterinarian department, I called my boss to check what to do and to get the number of the ministry of health which deals with all things connected to the risk of rabies in humans.  Then I called them and reported it and was told I had to come in within the next 2 days to get shots. I decided I wanted to do it as soon as possible and went in this morning, not realizing it would take the whole day to deal with it. I first went to the secretary (who I talk to on the phone frequently for work related matters) to fill out forms, then was checked by their doctor and then sent to the nurse for the actual shots. After waiting more than half an hour (for what I'm not sure as I didn't see anyone else go in in the meantime), I was called in and they explained to me the whole process - they were going to give me 2 shots immediately and then I would have to go to a hospital emergency room to get the third shot.  I later have to go back to them for more shots, 3 days, 7 days and 14 days after the shots I got today.  I got the shots from them and then went to the hospital and sat there waiting for about 3 hours to have the doctor give me the 3rd shot. I still haven't figured out why they couldn't give me the 3rd along with the first two - the doctor didn't do anything more before giving me the shot than the nurses at the ministry of health did, and he didn't even observe me for a few minutes afterwards to make sure I didn't have any reaction to the shot (and he didn't specialize in anything even vaguely related - he was an orthopedist and apparently he's the one who always takes care of this vaccination).  And thus a whole day was wasted instead of a few hours.
At least now when people report things like this while I'm at work, I know what they have to go through.

2 comments:

  1. My son got antibiotics along with the rabies shots. Did you ever hear that story?

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