{"id":67230,"date":"2025-08-08T08:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T08:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/67230\/"},"modified":"2025-08-08T08:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T08:49:11","slug":"mass-woman-charged-thousands-after-a-bat-flew-into-her-mouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/67230\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass. woman charged thousands after a bat flew into her mouth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOff Beat\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cAs I was screaming, part of the bat unfortunately went in my mouth (fun fact, they taste earthy and a little sweet!)”<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\tErica Kahn was on vacation in Arizona with her father last year when a wild bat flew into her open mouth. GoFundMe\t<\/p>\n

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

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\u2019s camera and her face.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I was screaming, part of the bat unfortunately went in my mouth (fun fact, they taste earthy and a little sweet!),\u201d Kahn recalled on a GoFundMe page<\/a> 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<\/a> for rabies due to the close contact.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019d be covered when she went to the hospital, according to KFF Health News<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, Kahn\u2019s 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\u2019s medical bills totaled $20,749.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it must have been a mistake,\u201d she told KFF. \u201cI guess I was naive.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the U.S., bats are the most-reported animals with rabies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>. 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as NPR<\/a> reports, post-exposure treatment \u2014 which usually involves several doses of the rabies vaccine and rabies immunoglobulin \u2014 can cost thousands of dollars even before hospital fees kick in.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s also vowed to donate half of the proceeds to UNICEF to support health care for families in need.<\/p>\n

While she acknowledged her mistake in declining to stay on her former employer\u2019s insurance under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), Kahn said the cost of her medical care was \u201cpretty extreme.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish our health care system wasn\u2019t so broken in the United States,\u201d she added on her fundraising page. \u201cI believe life-saving medical care is a fundamental human right and it\u2019s depressing that Americans can only turn to GoFundMe instead of a federally protected safety net.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Kahn was adamant she harbors no ill will toward bats. She\u2019s also tried to keep a sense of humor about the ordeal, medical bills notwithstanding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Michael Scott said in The Office<\/a>, \u2018myth: three Americans every year die from rabies. Fact: *four* Americans every year die from rabies,\u2019\u201d Kahn joked on her GoFundMe.<\/p>\n

\t\t\"Profile\t<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for the Today newsletter<\/p>\n

Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Off Beat \u201cAs I was screaming, part of the bat unfortunately went in my mouth (fun fact, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-67230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}