Most people don’t think of rabies as a common virus, but it can infect many animals and humans. If caught early and treated before symptoms occur, the patient can usually be saved. Once the virus attacks the brain and nervous system, the chance of saving the infected person drops.
A 6-year-old boy named Ryker recently passed away from rabies after contracting it from a bat.
Ryker’s father, Henry Roque, had found a baby bat and intended on nursing it back to health. It scratched the young boy. Although his parents didn’t think anything of it at the time, Ryker started to become ill.
His father explained:
“(I) found a bat, put it in a little bucket, put it on the porch and I had asked my son, ‘Don’t touch it under any circumstances.’ So, apparently, he put his hand in there and touched it and he said it only scratched him, so I frantically Googled it real quick, and it says to wash his hands with soap, hot water for five minutes.”
First, Ryker’s fingers became numb, and then more serious symptoms appeared.
When his parents remembered he had been scratched by the bat, they decided to take him to the hospital to see if the injury could have been causing the symptoms.
As soon as the family mentioned the bat, the doctors became worried. Henry described their reactions:
“I mean, alarms, bells, whistles went off. They went frantically looking for the other doctors to tell them that it was a bat and how severe it was. And then they all came in. We had a conference and they explained to me that it’s almost always lethal.”
It was worse than they thought; the virus had already spread to his brain.
They tried to treat it, but Ryker could not be saved. If he would have been treated sooner, he might have survived. There have been other children who have survived rabies by receiving the shots before they showed symptoms.
The doctors used a treatment method called the Milwaukee protocol that had been used to save other children in the past. One girl who was treated with the method was doing particularly well and living a normal life.
According to Today:
“Around 55,000 people die of rabies every year, with dogs the source of 99 percent of these fatal bites. People can survive if vaccinated immediately after a bite or other exposure to rabies. But the few U.S. cases are usually in children who have been bitten by bats and either do not realize they were bitten — bats have tiny teeth — or are unable to say so.”
The family is devastated by the loss of Ryker.
They never expected that a bat could cause so much damage to his little body or that he needed immediate medical attention because of a scratch.
Doctors encourage anyone who comes into direct contact with a bat or any other animal that appears sick or could have rabies to get checked out.
It is better to be safe than sorry, and they don’t want to see other cases end like young Ryker’s.
“It’s almost never too late to take shots if you have had a real exposure to an animal,” said Dr. Rodney Willoughby of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, who invented the Milwaukee protocol.
Before Ryker passed, some family members set up a GoFundMe account to help pay for his medical bills. They have raised more than $11,000 of their $20,000 goal.
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