It can take anything from one week to more than a year for symptoms of rabies to appear after infection, although the average time is four to eight weeks. This is known as the incubation period. The closer the bite is to the head, the shorter the incubation period. A bite to the face, head or neck will have a shorter incubation time than a bite to the arm or leg.
If an animal bite is not treated in time, rabies will start with pain or tingling at the site of the bite with fever, loss of appetite and headache.
There are two ways in which rabies can develop which can lead to furious rabies or dumb rabies.
Symptoms of furious rabies
In furious rabies there is a growing sense of anxiety, jumpiness, disorientation, neck stiffness, and sometimes seizures (fits) or convulsions (violent or sudden movements). The pupils may appear dilated (enlarged) and there may be an increased sensitivity to sound, light and temperature.
Within a week, many infected people show a fear of swallowing. In spite of overwhelming thirst, any attempt to drink causes spasms of the throat muscles and diaphragm (muscle under the lungs). This is called hydrophobia (fear of water).
As it worsens, even the sight or sound of water brings on these effects and there are intervals of deranged behaviour with spitting, biting and delirium (it is in this phase that animals bite). Delusions and hallucinations develop. These attacks alternate with periods of clear-mindedness when the person suffers acute anxiety and mental distress.
Symptoms of dumb rabies
Dumb rabies is less common and affects the spinal cord. It causes muscle paralysis to spread across the body, leading to heart and lung failure. Total paralysis, coma and death follow in almost 100% of cases of rabies, usually about a week after the severe symptoms develop.
Pain
Pain is an unpleasant physical or emotional feeling that your body produces as a warning sign that it has been damaged.
Fever
A fever is when you have a high body temperature (over 38C or 100.4F).
Loss of appetite
Loss of appetite is when you do not feel hungry or want to eat.
Anxiety
Anxiety is an unpleasant feeling when you feel worried, uneasy or distressed about something that may or may not be about to happen.
Lungs
Lungs are a pair of organs in the chest that control breathing. They remove carbon dioxide from the blood and replace it with oxygen.
Panic
To panic is to be quickly overcome with a feeling of fear or worry.
Delusions
If someone is suffering from delusions, they have lost touch with reality and may experience hallucinations.
Hallucinations
Hallucinations are a sensory experience in which a person sees, hears, or feels something or someone that isn't really there.
Coma
A coma is a sleep like state when someone is unconscious for a long period of time.
