A Virginia doctor woke up to a nightmare she initially thought was a dream: A bat was inside her mouth.
Dr. Krista Edelman, a Richmond gastroenterologist, said she was asleep beside her husband around 6 a.m. local time in Aug. 20 when she dreamed that a small mouse was trying to get into her mouth. She reached up to investigate and grabbed something soft, hairy and cool.
“I thought I was still dreaming,” Edelman said in her Instagram video. Then she realized it wasn't a mouse, as reported by local Virginia outlets WWBT and WTVR.
“It was like, my gosh, this is real life,” she told WWBT.
Edelman said the bat appeared to be trying to burrow between her lips and into her mouth. She pulled it out and threw it across the room before waking her husband
and telling him a bat had been trying to get into her mouth.
The bizarre encounter prompted Edelman to share a warning about rabies and what people should do after possible contact with a bat.
In her Instagram video, Edelman described the post as “a bat PSA,” urging people to take possible bat exposures seriously.
USA TODAY has reached out to Edelman for additional comments about her experience and the warning she shared about potential bat exposures.
Bat tested negative for rabies
Edelman said she knew she needed to take the encounter seriously because bats can carry rabies, a viral disease that attacks the nervous system and is almost always fatal once symptoms begin.
She and her husband managed to capture the bat so it could be tested. The animal later tested negative for rabies, WWBT reported.
Even so, the couple began preventive rabies treatment.
Edelman told WTVR that the experience humbled her because, despite being a physician, she realized she wasn't entirely sure what steps to take after waking up with a bat in her mouth.
“I think I know the basics of things,” she told the station. “And I was humbled about how I didn’t really know what to do in that situation.”
Her experience illustrates one of the difficulties with bat exposures: A person may not know they have been bitten.
Why bats can pose a rabies risk
Rabies spreads through the saliva or nervous tissue of an infected mammal, usually through a bite. Contact with infected bats is the leading cause of human rabies deaths in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 7 in 10 people who die from rabies in the US were infected by bats.
Bat bites can be tiny and may not leave an obvious mark. That means someone who wakes up with a bat in a bedroom may not be able to determine whether they were bitten while sleeping.
That concern has taken on added weight following the death of an 11-year-old boy in Canada. The boy awoke at a family cottage in northern Ontario in 2024 with a bat resting across his nose and mouth. He had no visible bite or scratch, so his family did not initially seek medical treatment.
About 19 days later, he developed facial numbness and vomiting. His condition deteriorated rapidly, and doctors ultimately diagnosed him with rabies. He died after more than two weeks in the hospital.
The case, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, emphasized the importance of seeking medical advice after direct contact with a bat, even when there is no visible injury.
What should you do after contact with a bat?
Edelman said her experience changed how she thinks about an encounter that might otherwise seem harmless.
“If you are exposed or if you're sleeping and there's a bat around, you don't know if it could have bit you or had contact,” she said in a video on her Instagram page which has over a million views and thousands of comments. “You need to be proactive.”
The CDC advises people who may have had contact with a bat to seek medical attention. Because bat bites can be difficult to detect, a health care provider or public health official can help determine whether rabies treatment is necessary.
For Edelman, a bizarre moment in the middle of the night became a reminder that wildlife encounters can carry risks that aren't always immediately visible.
Her message is simple: If a bat gets into a room where someone is sleeping, don't assume you're in the clear just because there is no obvious bite or scratch. Get medical advice and let health officials determine whether treatment is needed.
Reporter Anthony Thompson can be reached at ajthompson@usatodayco.com, or on X @athompsonUSAT
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Doctor wakes up to bat in her mouth: 'I thought I was still dreaming'
