Rabies Shots

So the final book in the Jinx trilogy,  Jinx’s Fire, comes out in just 20 days, and I’ll be doing some events (more to come later). I hope you’ll attend, and that you’ll come up and say hello. I promise not to bite… 

…and anyway, I’m getting rabies shots.

There seem to be two FAQ about rabies shots, which I would like to address here.

Q: Is it true they are given in the stomach every day for ten days with a needle as long as your arm, and are horribly painful?

A: No. It turns out they are given in your arm with an ordinary-sized needle, and they don’t hurt any more than an ordinary shot. And I’m having four of them over a period of two weeks, which is standard. (Immune-compromised people have five over the course of a month.)

Q: DId something bite you?

Not to my knowledge. But I’ve been sleeping for the past couple weeks in a room that has periodically filled with bats. Not cute little upstate New York bats, but big honking New England bats.

Because there is a very remote possibility of contracting rabies simply from sleeping in a batty room (i.e. it seems to happen about once every few years in the US) the public health officials in Rhode Island, where I’m staying right now, advise people to get rabies shots under these circumstances.

I don’t really think I need the shots, but the disease is nearly 100% preventable with the shots, and nearly 100% fatal without them. 

So prevention seems like the way to go.