A doctor's life: Rabies

Summer months in Bukidnon see a rise in Rabies cases. Dogs that do not have a permanent home, but just wander around are most prone to this disease. This is the time when we were most vigilant about stray dogs entering the porous borders of the campus of MVC. I always had a loaded rifle on hand in the clinic so that any time it was needed I had the suspected rabid dog in my crosshairs. 

One lazy afternoon I got a call on the radio that a bedraggled mutt was walking aimlessly in the classroom area and no amount of shooing it worked. I knew that a gun in this tight quarters would be disastrous so I called some guards and we met at the administration building to find a rabid dog that was dripping saliva. Without the right equipment we didn't dare touch it, but one guard stepped up and hit the dog on the head with his stick. It jumped up and the wild chase began, which took us through the wide open lawn towards the faculty housing. Someone ahead with a machete saw the dog approach him with us at its heels and he swung the machete in time to crack open the dogs skull with the wound slicing up the face to the tip of the nose. The crazed dog lay there on the road with about 5 of us surrounding it and we were looking right into the exposed brain when all of a sudden it stood up and lunged at us. We scattered like scared pigeons until we realized that the dog was scampering away, which resumed our mad pursuit until about 300 meters where it collapsed in a heap - dead. I just related this incident to demonstrate how a rabid dog can go crazy and cause havoc among humans and animals.

One unique case involving Rabies presented as a middle-age woman who was spending a few days in MVC and she came to the clinic asking for Rabies shots. I needed to get the history about her possible dog bite when she told me that she never got bitten, but her doctor in Luzon sent her an urgent message telling her to immediately get treatment for Rabies. It turned out that she just had a cadaveric corneal transplant. Another patient got the other cornea of the same donor only to manifest Rabies in about a week. That was when they found out that the donor died because of Rabies and the cornea apparently had the virus. With that information I didn't waste time, but told her to immediately rush to Cagayan de Oro for treatment since my facilities were insufficient for a possible full blown Rabies case. This was the first and only Rabies case that I encountered that wasn't transmitted by the bite of an animal.