Anne Baker

I took a year off to travel a few years ago and ended up getting bit by a dog at the top of a mountain in Albania. While it wasn’t a bad bite, it drew blood and the dog was wild, so I knew I had to get rabies vaccinations. It took me about 36 hours to get the first shot (because Albania doesn’t have any rabies vaccines, surprise!) and I ended up back in Montenegro. If you know anything about rabies, you know that (1) if you get it, you die, and (2) the vaccine sequence is quite long (you need shots on day 0, 3, 7, 14, and 28). After about day 14, I was tired of my rabies vaccine tour of the Balkans and wanted to come home. I called Stanford to see if I could finish my course back in the US, and was essentially told that the vaccine I was receiving in Europe was not FDA-approved and I’d have to restart the entire sequence (at the cost of $10,000). I stayed in Europe and jetted back home the day after receiving my last shot in Romania. Obviously a very different situation from Max’s, but it was my first experience with how strange the gaps between medical systems can be. I was lucky that I could afford to extend my trip and finish the treatment abroad. It seems ridiculous that this was the easier option.