Surviving Rabies: An Exception

If symptoms of rabies develop, there is no cure for the disease. Death usually occurs within days of the onset of the rabies symptoms.

 

Only one person in the United States is known to have recovered from rabies without receiving a rabies vaccination, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While attending a church service in September 2004, 15-year-old Jeanna Giese of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, picked up a bat she saw fall to the floor and released it outside the building. The bat bit her on the left index finger, but she did not get medical treatment at the time. A month later, the teen complained of tiredness and a feeling of numbness in her left hand. Walking became difficult, and she experienced double vision, nausea, vomiting, slurred speech, twitching, and fever. Giese was diagnosed with rabies. After intensive care in a Milwaukee hospital, which included a drug-induced coma for seven days, she gradually improved. Doctors are unsure if she will ever fully recover.