Was Bear Gryll’s exposed to rabies?

I’ve been watching that show ‘Man vs. Wild’ on Discovery channel. If you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to tune in. Discovery has a schedule on the web (see http://dsc.discovery.com).

I first happened upon ‘Man vs. Wild’ just channel surfing, but within a few minutes of watching, I was hooked. Here was some great TV – which is hard to find these days. I don’t know why television in general is so pandering – I often wonder why the networks just don’t strive to make great programs and worry about the audiences secondarily. I think ‘build it and they will come’ should apply –even though it might seem riskier. Just consider the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy for example – what a Masterpiece!

Anyway, here’s this guy Bear Grylls, who by some miracle survived and recovered from a broken back after a parachuting accident. Now his assignment is to lead the viewer through some harrowing wilderness challenge. The show is a great mix of adventure, amazing natural beauty, perseverance, intelligence and ultimately triumph. I think this program inspires hope. I may not get outdoors that much, but I feel like I could spring into the back yard at any time, climb over the fence and into the wild mountains beyond.

I’ve seen many ‘cord’ victims in my career, since my training hospital had a spinal cord center. I dreaded to see them, since paralysis is such an awful curse. As a doctor, you wish you could do more, but with devastating neural injury, sometimes there was just nothing you could do. Bear must have been very lucky and I’m sure a miracle occurred there.

I’m hoping Bear’s luck holds out. Last week I saw his ‘Panama’ episode, where he and the crew traverse through a bat infested cave in pitch darkness. He didn’t report the species of bat, although he suggested they were vampire bats – Desmodus rotundus. Whether or not that was the correct species is irrelevant, since rabies is actually a ‘bat’ virus and could be transmitted by any number of bat species.

Saving the street animals in Bangkok

It was mid-April in Bangkok and I was visiting Thailand to help educate the public there about the dangers of rabies. 

I was thrilled to be going around this city with Mali - a friend of mine who worked in film.  What a far off place this was - exotic temple architecture, huge sky scrapers, amazingly good food, crowds of people everywhere.  Traffic clogged the streets.  The noise from tuk-tuks - small carriages with motorbike engines- buzzed through the air.  It was the hot season, but I didn’t mind, it just added to the mystique of this steaming metropolis, the gateway to beautiful Thailand.

Mali wanted to know all about rabies, since she knew it was a real danger.  There were plenty of street dogs in Bangkok.  You could see them roaming and foraging for scraps of food.  They appeared similar to the street dogs I’d seen elsewhere in Asia - a rather thin mangy breed.  There were of course other animals too, including a small elephant brought along one of the main tourist streets for the farangs to gawk at.

My friend peppered me with questions about rabies.  She was concerned about her sister, Pho, who loved street animals and was always trying to care for them.  Pho had actually taken in six cats.  She was constantly getting scratched and occasionally nipped by the street animals since she was taking care of them whenever she could.  I became somewhat alarmed to realize that Pho was at a real risk for rabies. 

My first rabies mentor

When I first came to the Philippines, I was introduced to many of the doctors at San Lazaro Hospital.

My first rotation was with Dr. Camino. He must have been in this early fifties. He, like many Filipinos, was rather small. He sat behind a small old wooden desk, which was stacked with papers on each corner. He wore a wry smile and joked in Tagalog with the other doctors and patients which frequented his office. His office door would swing open, and a patient and family members would pour in, sometimes bearing gifts of sticky coconut cake or other ‘merienda’.

He wore a white polyester blazer and black polyester pants, with polished red-brown leather shoes. A stethescope hung over his shoulders, its chromium frame glinting under the fluorescent strip lights. The strong smell of nicotine washed over me as he laughed, all too perfect bright white teeth flashing behind a peppered mustache.

Dr. Camino had an infectious flamboyance, encouraging others to laugh at his silly jokes. He was a brilliant man, sharp of mind, but seeming unabsorbed with his genius. Laughing was his preoccupation. Caring for the patients on the ward seemed to be done automatically.

It was Dr. Camino that gave me the idea and the means to film the rabies patients I was seeing every week. I never even thought to bring a video camera on this rotation, but he lent me his – a solid Sony Hi-8 camcorder. I remember him telling me ‘They’ll never believe this’ – referring to the incredible disease manifestations of human rabies. He was right.