Rabies: Humboldt girl beats virus against odds

Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Three weeks ago, 8-year-old Precious Reynolds had rabies. She was comatose in the UC Davis Children's Hospital - as sick as a little girl can get, her body fighting off a vicious infection that almost no one survives.

Her grandmother sat beside her bed, and every day she gave Precious the same stern encouragement.

"I'd tell her that she had a big bad bug inside her, and she had to fight this big bad bug," Shirlee Roby recalls saying to her granddaughter, who happens to be an avid wrestler in her Humboldt County town of Willow Creek.

"I told her she had to put him on the mat and put him in a half-nelson and pin him," Roby said. "And by golly if she didn't do it."



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/11/MN241JRH8J.DTL

I was fortunate to be able to live there for a couple of years and would gladly return if I could only find a way to sustain myself.Glad that the girl is on the mend.

Funny, I was just telling one of my kids that rabies among humans is incredibly rare (thanks to the injections for those exposed).

I just googled and saw there are only 6 known cases of a person surviving rabies infection.