Mass. woman charged thousands after a bat flew into her mouth

Off Beat

“As I was screaming, part of the bat unfortunately went in my mouth (fun fact, they taste earthy and a little sweet!)”

A Massachusetts woman was left on the hook for thousands of dollars in medical bills after a bat flew into her open mouth during a stargazing trip to Arizona last year.

Erica Kahn and her father were snapping long-exposure photos of the nighttime landscape at Horseshoe Bend when a wild bat managed to wedge itself between Kahn’s camera and her face. 

“As I was screaming, part of the bat unfortunately went in my mouth (fun fact, they taste earthy and a little sweet!),” Kahn recalled on a GoFundMe page to help cover her subsequent medical bills. She said her father, a doctor, recommended she go to an emergency room to receive post-exposure prophylaxis for rabies due to the close contact. 

But there was a catch: The 33-year-old biomedical engineer was temporarily uninsured, having opted to forgo health insurance after she was laid off last summer. Kahn found an insurance policy online the day after the bat incident and signed up, figuring she’d be covered when she went to the hospital, according to KFF Health News. 

In fact, Kahn’s chosen insurer had a 30-day waiting period for benefits to kick in, the news outlet reported. Four hospital visits and seven shots later, Kahn’s medical bills totaled $20,749.

“I thought it must have been a mistake,” she told KFF. “I guess I was naive.”

In the U.S., bats are the most-reported animals with rabies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the CDC reports that most people who die of rabies in the U.S. have been exposed to a rabid bat. The agency also notes that bat bites can be tiny, and anyone who gets bat saliva or brain matter in their eyes, nose, mouth, or open wounds should seek urgent medical care. 

But as NPR reports, post-exposure treatment — which usually involves several doses of the rabies vaccine and rabies immunoglobulin — can cost thousands of dollars even before hospital fees kick in.

Now employed again and working to negotiate and pay down her medical bills, Kahn is turning to GoFundMe for help covering some of the costs. With a fundraising goal of $12,000, she’s also vowed to donate half of the proceeds to UNICEF to support health care for families in need.

While she acknowledged her mistake in declining to stay on her former employer’s insurance under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), Kahn said the cost of her medical care was “pretty extreme.” 

“I wish our health care system wasn’t so broken in the United States,” she added on her fundraising page. “I believe life-saving medical care is a fundamental human right and it’s depressing that Americans can only turn to GoFundMe instead of a federally protected safety net.”

Still, Kahn was adamant she harbors no ill will toward bats. She’s also tried to keep a sense of humor about the ordeal, medical bills notwithstanding. 

“As Michael Scott said in The Office, ‘myth: three Americans every year die from rabies. Fact: *four* Americans every year die from rabies,’” Kahn joked on her GoFundMe.

Abby Patkin is a general assignment news reporter whose work touches on public transit, crime, health, and everything in between. She has been covering the Karen Read murder case.