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Do I need rabies PEP?

So I was outside minding my own business, and there was this bat that was flying around the neighborhood light near the basketball court where I usually walked around at night sometimes because of my insomnia, and I was wearing a jacket with a hoodie, and I had a hoodie on and as I was walking around the neighborhood light, I saw the bat from the top of my vision, but don't remember what exact trajectory it took or anything, nor do I know how close it got to me, but all was good until I felt like I had been cut around about the left side of my forehead and I felt like I was bleeding. I went back inside to look into the mirror, and saw no blood or anything. Sometime later, I happened to look into a mirror, and noticed these two horizontal marks across my forehead, but with no blood. It's kinda like if you have wrinkles in your forehead when you raise your eyebrows, but this looked like two wrinkles/scratches, but my eyebrows were relaxed. I got worried, but decided i'd wait for another day. The next day, I went about my business until I remembered what happened last night, so I looked again into the mirror and noticed that the two wrinkles/scratches were either gone, or were very faint and were fading away. That was when my paranoia got triggered yet again. I didn't feel the bat brush me or anything like that, but then again I wasn't really able to tell how far away this thing was from me, because my hoodie was obscuring the top of my vision. Should I go to a hospital?

Another detail I might add is that this bat has been around since June 2018, and i've been worried about getting rabies ever since. It only comes around at night though, and usually flies around my neighborhood lights to catch bugs. But still, some people would still recommend the vaccine for an exposure even if it weren't showing any signs. Is this true? Should I wait for about another month to see if it's still alive just to make sure that I don't need the vaccine?

Additional information: I asked this on r/medical earlier and waited for an hour and only got one response from somebody who clearly didn't know too much about the disease, so I decided to ask around to see if I could get better answers. I don't have a car, so I can't drive to my local UC/ED, and everybody in my family will immediately just brush it off as paranoia, so I likely won't get any transportation from them either. I definitely don't want to call 9/11, but if that is the best option, I guess I might have to do it, since there's no other way i'm gonna be able to get any medical attention for this. I have (had?) a primary care physician, but she wasn't worth hardly anything. I've talked to her about this concern and she told me they didn't have PEP, and there was no way they could get it either. Plus, they might've thrown me out as a patient, because they told me that if I missed three appointments, they'll dismiss me as a patient there, and the last time they scheduled an appointment for me, I never answered, and I believe that was the third strike anyways. She would always schedule these pointless appointments for me, even when I didn't need to see her. But that was all I could get with my adult medicaid insurance. As for the last detail, since I accidentally broke my iPhone and it no longer works, and I tried to charge up my old iPhone that I had previously broke before getting the new one, but the thing wouldn't work either, nor would it show me that it was charging. So instead I had to use my laptops webcam to take the picture, and I only took one, so this is the best view you're going to get of it, because the camera on this thing sucks (well, pretty much everything about my laptop does).

Also note that it didn't bleed nor was there any exposed skin like you would get with a normal cut. Instead, these were like two horizontal lines across my forehead that looked like wrinkles, but without raising my eyebrows, and in this picture you can kinda make that out a little bit. Except for the fact that those two horizontal lines are now gone (or at least faint).

https://imgur.com/a/wLA5Q5t

21 / Male / 5'8" / 150 lbs / Caucasian / 1 day / forehead / hypochondria, Anxiety Disorder, ADHD / remeron, adderall, wellbutrin, clonidine (used to take it but stopped)
2 Responses
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363281 tn?1643235611
COMMUNITY LEADER
Hello~I hope by now things have cleared up and you have calmed down. I agree with "Specialmom" I wouldn't worry, you would have known if you were bitten, it could have been due to some dry skin or maybe you accidentally rubbed it.

Helpful - 0
973741 tn?1342342773
This is pretty epic long but I will say the stand out point to me is that you were not bitten.  Your skin was not broken. I'm no fan of bats!  I'd know if it got my forehead.  I think you are overthinking this and I'd let it go.  Do you have some anxiety in general?
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way off the beaten track!, BC
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