A 76-year-old man in Montreal found a rat in his toilet bowl. He reached in to remove it, and it bit him on two fingers. He went to an emergency department, got basic wound care and a tetanus booster, and was sent home.
Eighteen days later he was back, carrying three days of fever, headache and abdominal pain. His blood pressure was low, his heart rate high, his kidneys already injured and his platelet count falling. He was admitted to intensive care with sepsis of unclear origin.
