It was a normal Sunday for Jeanna Giese in her hometown of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and began in the same manner as it usually did, with a trip to church with her family.
However, an unexpected turn of events that day in September 2004 left the 15-year-old fighting for her life against a fatal disease.
A wild bat had got into the church and caused havoc as it tried to escape through the stained glass windows. As worshippers listened to the sermon, they swatted at the bat with their hats as it frantically flew over their heads. One usher’s powerful hit saw the bat crash to the floor.
Jeanna had always loved animals and the teenager felt sorry for the ‘stunned’ creature, so after gaining her mum’s permission, carried it outside.
‘I found a pine tree I thought would be perfect to let it rest on, but before I could, it clamped down hard on my finger. The puncture mark was no bigger than a pinprick, but it oozed blood and was very painful,’ Jeanna recalled in an interview with The Guardian.
She pulled the bat’s fang out of her left index finger, and once home, her mother cleaned the wound with antiseptic. The incident was surreal, but they never suspected for a moment that things would spiral far out of their control.
It was around three weeks later, that Jeanna felt severely unwell. ‘I woke up and I could not get out of bed, my face was flush, I could hardly move,’ she later told Fox News.
As she began vomiting uncontrollably and suffering double vision, her concerned parents took Jeanna to the nearby St. Agnes Hospital, where doctors were baffled as to what was wrong with her. Tests for diseases, including meningitis and Lyme Disease, provided negative results, so eventually Jeanna was sent home.
However, her symptoms only got worse and two days later she returned to hospital with her parents and was kept in overnight. When her mother mentioned the bat bite to a doctor, he looked visibly concerned.
Quickly, Jeanna was transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, where she met Dr. Rodney Willoughby, a pediatric doctor specialising in infectious diseases, who tested her for rabies.
The next day it was confirmed that she had contracted the deadly disease- but it was too late for the life-saving rabies vaccine, which needs to be administered before symptoms. Nobody had ever survived without it.
Talking about his patient, Dr Willoughby later admitted to Fox News: ‘I thought she was going to die. That’s what they all did. That’s about the extent of my knowledge of rabies at the time, that there wasn’t much to do. It’s really 100% fatal.’
Jeanna’s mother and father were given the stark choice of leaving their daughter to die in the hospital or at home, ‘My parents were devastated. The whole thing happened so quickly that they couldn’t process it,’ she would recall later.
However, Dr. Rodney refused to give up and suggested putting Jeanna into a coma to suppress her brain function, which would give her immune system a chance to fight the rabies virus.
Usually, the virus travels to the brain through the nerves and spinal cord, causing the body to shut down, but it was hoped his radical treatment plan could slow the process.
Almost exactly one month after the bite, Jeanna was placed into a coma on October 10, and was woken up two weeks later.
‘I tried to scream, but no sound came out. I couldn’t walk, talk, sit up or do anything,’ she remembered. ‘I was basically a newborn baby at the age of 15. I couldn’t do anything.’.
The teenager spent 11 weeks in the hospital and then two years at the outpatient therapy unit so she could relearn the basic skills. It took two months to walk again, and two years without any help.
‘Since I was, at that point, the only person to have survived rabies without a vaccine, I became a global news sensation and had to work on my recovery with film crews documenting every minute. It was overwhelming. What helped was the support from my family and the doctors, as well as letters from all over the world,’ she explained.
‘While not every case has had the same positive outcome, it is incredible that there is now a chance of surviving a disease once considered fatal without a vaccination. I am overjoyed to know that I helped pave the way for that change.’
Following Jeanna’s case, there have been 45 known survivors of rabies – 18 of whom went through what’s now called the Milwaukee Protocol, a medically induced coma and antiviral drugs.
However, while the method was celebrated for saving the teenager’s life, it was also deemed controversial by some, who questioned the ethics of using an unproven treatment on a child without truly knowing the potential risks and side effects of the treatment.
Dr Suzanne Wylie, GP and medical adviser for IQdoctor, told Metro: ‘Multiple attempts to reproduce this outcome have failed. In at least three documented cases, patients who received the same treatment have died.
‘The virus uses sophisticated tactics to avoid immune detection. Interestingly, wild strains of rabies replicate more slowly than lab-altered ones, which may help them spread silently and avoid triggering a full immune response.
‘Given these complexities, many experts now view the Milwaukee Protocol as a drastic and unreliable measure. The survival of the original patient may have had more to do with a weaker form of the virus or unusual genetic resistance than with the treatment itself.’
Dr Wylie adds that the key takeaway is that rabies is preventable, but through immediate vaccination after exposure: ‘Public education, animal vaccination, and timely medical care are the most reliable ways to stop this deadly virus before it takes hold.’
Now 36 and a mother of three, Jeanna still suffers from nerve damage following her ordeal. However, she manages to live a happy life, working at the Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac and raising awareness about rabies in the hope of reducing the number of cases.
Jeanna also volunteers for bat conservation charities.
‘One might have nearly taken my life, but I feel it’s still my duty to protect theirs,’ she has since explained, adding, ‘A lot of people are astonished that I actually love bats.’
The rabies virus explained
‘Rabies is a fatal but preventable disease. Although cases in UK travellers are very rare, a recent tragic case underscores the importance of awareness and timely treatment,’ says Dr Chris Smith of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). This week, British grandmother Yvonne Ford, 59, died of rabies after she was scratched by a puppy while on a Morocco holiday in February.
‘The disease is endemic in many parts of the world, including popular holiday destinations such as Morocco, Turkey, India, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
All human rabies cases reported in the UK since 1902 have been acquired abroad: typically through dog bites. Since 1946, 26 imported cases have been reported, with the most recent prior to this being in 2018, following a bite from a cat in Morocco.
‘Rabies is usually transmitted to humans through the bite or scratch of an infected animal, most often dogs, but also cats and bats. Even a minor scratch or lick on broken skin can pose a risk.
‘If exposed, immediate first aid is essential: the wound should be thoroughly washed with soap and water, and prompt post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) – including a course of rabies vaccinations and, in some cases, rabies immunoglobulin – should be sought. These interventions are highly effective when started early.’
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