Family undergoes rabies shots-4/3/99-BY AMY CALDER Staff Writer
FAIRFIELD CENTER - Daniel Higgins has a real hard time watching his daughter, Emily, get her rabies shots.
'That's a very sad thing to hold your 2-year-old on a table and her crying, 'Help me, daddy,'' Higgins said Wednesday.
Higgins and his wife, Lisa, their daughter, and son, Lucas, 5, all are undergoing the series of several shots, after at least one of their three cats was attacked by a rabid raccoon. Higgins fears the family could have been exposed to the virus.
'What we're going through, we don't want to see other people go through,' he said from their Ohio Hill Road home.
Rabies is a viral disease of the central nervous system. Rabies in humans in the United States is very rare, but rabies in animals - especially wildlife - is common in some parts of the country, according to information issued by the Division of Disease Control at the state Department of Human Services in Augusta.
The rabies virus lives in the saliva and brain and spinal cord tissue of animals and is spread when they bite or scratch. The virus also can be spread if saliva or nerve tissue touches broken skin or a mucous membrane in the mouth, nose or eyes.
The Higgins, who own a mail-order gift business, decided to have the rabies shots after a raccoon attacked 'Paws,' their 12-year-old cat, outside the house July 23.
Mrs. Higgins, who also works as a chemical engineer, acknowledged they had not kept their pet vaccinations up to date, something she urges others to do.
'We had a lot of things going on, and it just slipped through the cracks,' she said.
When they heard the cat screeching, they immediately assumed Paws was having a fight with another cat, they said.
But when Higgins opened the door and saw a vicious raccoon clutching the cat by the neck and swinging it around like a piece of meat, he grabbed a broom and sprung to action, he said.
'I didn't know anything about rabies,' Higgins recalled. 'When I tried to separate them, the raccoon came after me.'
The cat ran off, and Higgins held the raccoon at bay with the broom until a warden arrived and shot it. He never came in contact with the raccoon, but the animal later tested positive for the rabies virus.
A few days later, a neighbor said he saw the Higgins' cat, Garfield, wrestling with a raccoon. The family veterinarian euthanized Paws, who eventually returned home, and Garfield. The family's third cat, Pixie, is being quarantined in a cage for 10 days.
Because Higgins had handled the cats, and to be on the safe side, the family decided to take the rabies shots, they said.
One shot in the series is very painful; the rest sting, they said. The couple's shots are administered in the upper arm and buttocks; the children's, in the leg, they said.
The Higgins have learned a lot about the rabies virus since the attack. They said they think it is important for others to realize the danger.
Diane M. Williams, a registered nurse and nurse epidemiologist in the Division of Disease Control at the state Department of Human Services in Augusta, said Maine has not had a human case of rabies since 1934.
There are three types of rabies here - bat, fox and raccoon - and raccoon rabies first was found in the state in 1994. It has been detected in 12 of 16 counties statewide.
Humans are very susceptible to bat rabies, on the other hand, she said.
'Bat rabies does kill people in this country every year,' she said.
But, in order for a human to get rabies from a raccoon, the wet saliva of the rabid animal must go into an open wound, according to Williams.
'It's not easy for humans to get rabies,' she said. 'No humans, yet, have been infected with the raccoon strain of rabies.'
'If you take fresh, wet, saliva on your pet from a rabid animal, if that gets right into a fresh wound on your skin - a wound that has bled in the previous 24 hours, you could be infected,' she said. 'It has to have a good entrance in your body.'
Most people treated in Maine for the rabies shot do not actually need to take them, she said.
The shots average $ 2,500 per person and could cause minor side effects, or less likely, serious side effects. But many people do take the shots, out of fear of getting rabies, she said.
'This happens a lot,' she said. 'People are very afraid of rabies. They should be. It's deadly. It's important that each case be evaluated, case by case. People who are bitten by raccoons, we strongly recommend getting treatment.'
The Higgins family need not worry about getting rabies at this point, especially since they are getting treated, she said.
'It is unlikely, to me, they would have gotten that raccoon saliva into their bodies,' she said. 'The treatment has, thus far, been 100 percent effective.'
Julie A. Crosby, a microbiologist at the Health and Environmental Testing Laboratory in the DHS's Bureau of Health, said 500 animals in Maine were tested in the last year for rabies, but only 101, mostly foxes and skunks, tested positive.
In 1997, 244 cases of rabid animals were confirmed in Maine. Of those, 29 cases were in Kennebec County; 13 in Franklin, and one in Somerset County.
The most important thing people can do is have their pets vaccinated and kept up to date on the vaccinations, according to Crosby.
'That protects not only the animal, but the families involved,' Crosby said.
One should always wear gloves when dealing with an animal that may be rabid, she said. When the saliva on an animal has dried, one need not worry about being infected, she added.
Williams said when an attack like the one at the Higgins home occurs, one should call the local animal-control officer, a game warden, police or the county sheriff's office, in that order.
Higgins said they dialed 911 and their call was forwarded to state police and the warden service. As a result, Fairfield officials were not notified right away, and the family did not talk to the local animal-control officer for a few days.
The incubation period for rabies in dogs is two weeks to six months; cats, two to six weeks; and humans, two weeks to a year, according to information issued by DHS.
Copyright 1999 Guy Gannett Communications, Inc.
Central Maine Morning Sentinel (Waterville, ME)
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