Rabies!

It was probably Old Yeller that first turned me onto rabies. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, I’m not sure you really should—it’s painful to experience for the first time, especially for a kid like me, growing up with a strong affinity for animals.

Old Yeller is a beloved family dog who gets bitten by a rabid wolf while protecting the family. Yeller gets rabies himself. Travis, the young son who has fallen in love with the dog, has to shoot him at the tragic end of the book.

Like I said, maybe it’s okay that you never read this one.

Anyway, after learning the basics from Old Yeller about 40 years ago, I figured it’s time to advance my knowledge a bit with some rapid rabies research.

The word rabies comes from the Latin word rabere, and so does the word rage. That makes sense, since the symptoms of rabies include… well, rage.

You don’t instantly turn into a zombie, though. First, nothing at all happens for weeks, and sometimes even months. Rabies quietly does its work under the surface, making its way through your nervous system and into your brain.

At some point, your bite wound may begin tingling or itching, even though it seems to have healed. This is when the flu-like symptoms begin, like a fairly typical illness you’ve already seen or experienced yourself.

Here’s where the old name for rabies, hydrophobia, becomes obvious. You don’t want to drink any water, and when you force yourself to try, your throat painfully spasms. Your brain is now in a state of confusion and agitation. This is when hallucinations begin, and your sense of reality begins to break.

Zombie time!

Here’s the good news: getting rabies hasn’t been a death sentence like this since Louis Pasteur successfully treated a child who had been bitten by a rabid dog and would almost certainly eventually turn into a zombie. This was 1885, and access to Pasteur’s life-saving treatment has expanded ever since then.

Even still, if the clinical signs of rabies I’ve described above show up, you’re probably going to die of rabies. The other side of that coin is that simple wound cleaning and vaccine doses before any symptoms begin are almost always effective. The key is speed, supervision, and follow up.