Hello, I have been suffering from anxiety for years and tend to get fixated on strange and irrational phobias. For the last five days, I have been worried about possibly getting exposed to rabies by eating a piece of fruit. The story: I picked a ripe piece of fruit that had a bite mark in it. Since it was the only ripe fruit on the tree, I decided to eat it despite the fact that I knew there had been a rat in the area who could have been the one responsible for nibbling the fruit (the size of the bite mark and the presence of neighboring fruits with bites taken out of me suggested it probably wasn't a bug eating them. Also, there wasn't any oxidation on the fruit, so I think it was nibbled relatively recently). I rinsed the fruit and cut off the bite mark before eating it. Hours later, the paranoia started. I began thinking that maybe I didn't rinse the fruit well enough and that there might have been rat saliva still on it harboring an infectious disease, which I most fearfully began to think could be rabies, and now I have only a few days left to assuage my fears before it's too late to get a prophylactic. Does anyone know if it is likely to get rabies from this method? I know rabies doesn't live for long outside it's host and once the saliva has dried up. But maybe it hadn't been long enough since the rat or whatever munched it?
Sometimes I can't do things in life without being afraid of the consequences retroactively :(
Try to focus on positive things. Perhaps try biofeedback and walking for your anxiety.
mkh9