Nonetheless, this career has some major pitfalls, such as a lack of consistent medical insurance, and I am currently an active member of this "lack" bracket. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that when I was exposed to a bat last Saturday night, I found myself at 1:15 a.m. on Sunday morning, January 25th, walking through the eerily silent hallway and pavillion toward the ER at Bellevue Hospital on 27th and 1st Avenue, an institution known for its service to the uninsured.
The weirdest part of this experience is that there was a flying rodent in my 130 square foot "apartment," which my mother calls "the shoebox." I knew little about these creatures before Saturday night, other than that they swoop up, down and at you at full speed, are jet black, hang upside down when they sleep, are associated with vampires and should not, under any circumstances, be flying around an apartment on the Upper West Side, chased by a 2-year-old cat.
It's still a mystery how this Dracula maneuvered itself into my residence, but when I first saw it, all I could muster were numerous screams and "Oh My Gods!" for about 3 minutes. I was on the phone when I first realized that there was a cat and bat dance performing next to my couch. I ran into the hallway, waited until it swooped out, then rushed in and slammed my door (my friend with whom I was chatting later told me she thought I was having an aneurism). My mother, of course, convinced me to go to the ER as soon as possible because you don't always know if it bites you, I was exposed, etc. etc. Then, I started to panic. What if it bit me when I was sleeping? Could the bat itself have been sleeping in my apartment for a day or two unbeknownst to me? Could my cat have rabies now even though she was vaccinated in August? And of course, what if I actually DIE from rabies? Having hypochondriachal tendencies to begin with, it didn't take long to convince myself to get to a hospital. And soon.
ERs are an interesting place in general, so I figured Bellevue would be more than interesting. However, I didn't have to wait long, and the staff was amazing. At around 2:15 a.m. I was told by the resident (let's call him Dr. Y) that it probably wasn't necessary to get the rabies series because I wasn't bit, but he needed to double-check with the attending physician. Dr. Y was a first year resident, although he didn't really look old enough even to be in medical school, had a slight, endearing Chinese accent and had gone to Johns Hopkins. Incidentally, he had recently watched a special on National Geographic about bats. Timing is everything.
I spent the next 45 minutes on the phone with my dear friend Lauren trying to calm her down because she ran into a door leaving a club rushing to get a cab to come meet me and thought she had broken her nose. At least our conversation was a distraction from the messy bathroom inhabited by old people and weirdos walking around in smocks, not to mention a young guy with a busted lip who was having headaches and kept going into the bathroom for 30 minutes at a time, letting the faucet run (I chose to use the lavoratory around the corner).
Dr. Y came back about an hour later to inform me that I would, in fact, need the shots. Apparently, the Center for Disease Control thought it was wise because the bat was in my living quarters and may have left "droppings." Whatever. Okay, fine. I slowly came to learn that there is a shortage of rabies vaccines available in NYC, not to mention the entire country, so they had to call other hospitals in the city to get it transported for me.
Over the next four hours, I sat patiently with no book (big mistake) or distraction trying to sleep on a hospital chair. I was also attempting NOT to puke up my midori sours from earlier in the evening, but at the same time, I could feel my stomach eating my breasts from not having had dinner. I was in stellar condition.
However, the odd thing about the whole night/morning was that I found my situation fascinating. As I mentioned, attention is my thing, and I was getting a LOT of it in an ER simply for shots. There was no pain, no blood on my body, no illness (other than drunken remnants), nothing life threathening in the traditional sense and no broken bones, and yet, Dr. Y and his boss came back to talk to me several times. Apparently, they were having trouble getting the Immunoglobulin, the "rig" that halts any rabies I may already have in my system (I needed this shot in addition to the regular vaccine, which was easier to get). Even though it was highly unlikely I had contracted rabies, they were being "super cautious." These are two words anyone with any level of hypochondria loves to hear, so at least I knew I was in good hands.
This was a much bigger ordeal than I think anyone in the hospital, especially myself, could have predicted. I could hear the fourth year resident on the phone all night with different hospital pharmacies, could sense the urgency that they needed to give this shot to me before I left and that it was very difficult to obtain. Even still, I got the impression that the staff actually cared tremendously. They weren't dismissive with my questions, weren't impatient with me or each other (at least as far as I could tell) and probably don't get many cases like mine. I'm sure my situation was surprising and unique. The bottom line is this: I was a large source of their medical work for about 4.5 hours; I was the "Girl with the Bat," the "rabies patient-" titles I began to enjoy.
Moreover, it was quite educational to see how an ER works overnight. Grey's Anatomy makes a little more sense (only without the dramatic drama), as the whole medical and doctor hierarchy is obvious and necessary. These realizations may seem obvious, but unless one spends an entire night in an ER watching a clock tick and eavesdropping on residents and the attending physicians, they can be a foreign concept.
At around 6:15 a.m., Dr. Y came back with a smile on his face, a bounce in his step and said, "Well, you're sure getting a lot of attention. We've located the immunoglobulin, but it needs to be escorted here by the NYPD. Whenever there is a shortage of a medication at one hospital, it needs to be hand delivered by officers from where it is located." I was loving this, and so, it seems, was Dr. Y.
The shots were finally administered at 7:30 am. I was told to come back to the ER four more times, on very specific dates. The doctors bid me farewell, and I walked into the early sunny morning a little dazed, overly stimulated, a bit hungover, very hungry and fighting a headache. I arrived home at 8, slept fitfully for all of three hours and left for work at 11:45, where I got another headache and drank gingerale all afternoon so that I wouldn't vomit.
I have since had my second and third vaccines, with two more left. Each experience at Bellevue Hospital has been interesting and rather fun. The staff are consistently friendly, but shocked: "There was a bat in your apartment?" I don't mind. The more attention I receive, the better.
