A Batty Story from the PoolDoc

Some of you may know that I still do some local service work for larger commercial pools. Today, my older son and I were delivering some equipment, and doing a bit of cleaning in prep for a drain, pressure wash, and refill on a 200,000 gallon pool.

He was in the pool (1' deep in the shallow end) with a Leafeater, when he found a dead bat in the water. This can happen, when birds or bats or bugs, fly toward reflected lights in the water. Initially, he thought nothing of it, and neither did I.

But, then it dawned on me that a dead bat in pool might be there because it had rabies. So, I asked. Sure enough, he had an open cut on his foot, acquired while rock hopping in a mountain stream this past Saturday. That's not good.

So, I considered the sanitizer situation. No joy -- the pool had polyquat in it, but that's not an viricide, and the rabies pathogen is a virus. There'd been chlorine in the pool a week before, but with no stabilizer, there was no chlorine left. So, no effective anti-viral agent was in the water.

Darn!

On the one hand, I figured the risk of his being infected was really low, but on the other hand, rabies is fatal something like 99.9999% of the time. Or more.

Not good.

No need to panic though. The vaccines are effective almost up to the time when the infection is symptomatic, and the incubation period is usually 3 weeks or more. But, there was reason to investigate further.

So, I called Poison Control. The lady I spoke to listened carefully, and then delivered a big "Hmm-mh", and put me on hold while she asked. After being gone long enough for me to start worrying, she reported back that the risk was exceeding low to non-existant. One of the specialist physicians on call told her that the virus would have been not only highly dilute, but is inactivated by both sunlight and water. Since the pool was wet, and in the sun, the risk was of rabies was much lower than the risk from the vaccine, which is small.

Ok.

So he's OK. We think.

We'll let you know if he comes down with rabies. (Just kidding. ;) Sorta. :o)

Meanwhile, the recommendations I've made in the past are still good:

• Avoid touching dead animals with your hands; wash carefully with soap and water if you do.
• Remove the body from your pool, and dispose of it safely.
• Chlorinate to 5 ppm for 24 hours after, especially if it was a dead mammal. (Rat, bat, cat, rabbit, dog, skunk, possum, etc.)
• If you are using PHMB as a sanitizer, and can't add chlorine or any other effective viricide, you have my permisson to worry.:D

Ben
"PoolDoc"

Hi, Ben,

I would think poison control or the County Health Dept. would've tested the carcass for you....just to be completely positive.

That is a batty story! Im %99.99999 sure Batman is gonna be ok.

But - the real question is..... do you know how to read that decimal!

My sister in law had a fox jump her, she managed to grab it by the neck before it bit her and had her husband killed it. She had scratches and such. Even then, the county health department REFUSED to test the animal for rabies, the hospital did it! (It was too expensive to have it tested according to the county). She did the whole rabies shot thing, apparently it wasn't as bad as people say it is.

Not a pool story, but don't count on the county health department to make the right call!

Wow..I'm glad your son is going to be O.K.

Thanks for the info on removing dead stuff from the pool. I get mice and chipmunks all the time and I'm always uneasy swimming for a few days after.

I hate to be truly GROSS...but I used to work for a veterinary lab where we tested for rabies all the time. The test involves removal of the animals' brain, and if it has been dead too long, the brain is too decomposed to test. That was probably the case with the bat. I also agree that there is virutally nothing to worry aobut in this case, as the virus, if it even existed, was too dilute to do any real harm. Also, the shots are not painful...except in the pocketbook. They are VERY expensive. But they have not given "shots in the belly" for decades, All shots are given in in the arm, just like any other shot.

WOW! Don't know what else to say exccpt that I hope and pray that all turns out well. I know if it were a memeber of my family I would be a freaked out nut case!:eek:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by waterbear

WOW! Don't know what else to say except that I hope and pray that all turns out well. I know if it were a member of my family I would be a freaked out nut case!:eek:

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Thanks for your concern. But, I'm not sure we look at it quite that way.

I'm probably more accustomed to thinking realistically about probabilities of fatalities than most people who aren't actuaries.

Madison, my older son, nearly died of asthma when he was 3. Every week, I give him an anti-allergy antigen injection, after laying out the ampules of epinephrine, reminding myself of the dosages for anaphylactic shock, and mentally rehearsing what it would take to get him into the car, if he collapsed before he got there. We've known one person who died of allergy shots, and known of another. So the risk is there, non-trivial, and familiar.

From what I can tell, the risk that quite a few of us will die of bird flu within the next three years is greater than most of the risks we've been discussing. (Here's an interesting CDC page: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/qa.htm )

[Wheep! Wheep! Wheep! WARNING: Philosophical content ahead!]

Death is closer, and always more inevitable, than most people seem to like to think. Sometimes, I think the entire purpose of mass entertainment and sports is to distract us from the reality of death.

But it's close.

A year ago, this past Sunday, my 20 year old nephew died in a car accident. This past Saturday night, within an hour of the the anniversery of his death, a 17 year old member of my church, and current 'main squeeze' of one of my nieces nearly died in a very similar accident. I haven't seen the car yet, but his mother told me that David was stunned on seeing the car for the first time in daylight, that he was still alive and walking. Tuesday a week ago, a elderly man I've known for 20 years, who had been a member of my church for over 50 years, died suddenly. This past Saturday evening, his wife of 60+ years also died; my wife worked at the church most of yesterday morning, arranging a post-funeral meal for his family.

It's always close.

The question is, does either life or death mean anything? The conventional educated answer today is, "No, it means nothing!" Macbeth's madness has become the common sense of Western intelligentsia.

But it seems to me that mass entertainment is the answer to the question, "How can someone believe that and keep on living?" I think it's not merely a coincidence that "escape" has become such a key concept for marketers describing 'entertainments', including pools.

I'm exceedingly grateful that the answer, "Nothing!" is not one either of my boys accept, or live by. In the past, it was thought by many that if the worst thing that could happen in your life, was death, then you were dead already.

I agree.

[END Philosophical content. Sorry. Sorta]


Ben

Talk about synchronicity!
I just read this article today: Rabies Fatality

I sure am glad your son is ok, Ben!
And you're not foolin' about that bird flu, either. :(