A U.S. gastrointestinal doctor is sharing her story online after she woke up to a homeowner’s worst - and unexpected - nightmare.
On Friday, Dr. Krista Feldman posted a video reel to Instagram where she recounted waking up that morning from a “vivid dream.”
“I had a dream that there was a little mouse get into my mouth,” she said.
Feldman, who is based out of Richmond, Va., said that while she was “half-asleep,” she reached up to her mouth and touched something “slimy and a little hairy and cool.”
“I immediately somehow knew it was a bat,” she said.
The creature had been trying to “burrow” between Edelman’s lips and past her teeth, into her mouth.
“This is not normal,” she said. “Never heard of anything like this. Never seen bats in my house.”
She said she grabbed the bat and “threw it across the room.”
“I screamed and I told my husband ‘there’s a bat trying to get into my mouth,’” she said.
He went to find a T-ball bat.
As a physician, Feldman said she recalled that the bat had to be captured alive so it could be tested for rabies. With gloves and a bucket, the couple caught the bat.
Edelman said she handed the bat to local animal control for testing, but the results could take up to a week to get back.
In an interview with WTVR, a Richmond-based news station, she described calling a friend who was an infectious disease specialist for advice.
“He was anxious, and he’s not a very anxious person,” she said. “So when he got anxious, I started to get anxious, and what I didn’t fully realize at the time was that the closer to the brain the exposure, the markedly accelerated risk of transmission.”
Edelman and her husband visited the local emergency room, where she received both an immunoglobulin and a rabies vaccine.
Immunoglobulin is a treatment to immediately neutralize an infection to give the body time to develop a long-term immunity to the virus.
“The reason why it’s so important to be proactive ... in this scenario is because rabies has a very slow rate that it inoculates, and can cause issues in a human,” she said, adding that it can take up to three months before a person shows symptoms of the disease.
WTVR reported that Edelman tested negative for rabies.
On Instagram, Edelman concluded her story with a takeaway.
“Moral of the story: get an exterminator to come out to check your attic and your your chimneys and attics especially if you live in an old house in Richmond like I do,” she said.
WTVR reported that Edelman lives in a 100-year-old Victorian house.
“And if you are exposed or if you are sleeping and there’s a bat around, you don’t know if it could have bit you or had contact, you need to be proactive,” she said.
