01/13/2026
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September 12, 2004. A 15-year-old girl picked up a bat at church. Thirty-seven days later, she had rabies. Once symptoms appear, rabies is 100% fatal. She became the first person in history to survive.
Jeanna Giese was attending Sunday mass at St. Patrick’s Church in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with her mother. About 15 minutes before the service ended, a small bat began flying around, bothering the congregation. An usher swatted it down, and it fell to the floor at the top of the steps.
Jeanna—an animal lover—walked to the back of the church. She wanted to release the bat outside.
“I quickly noticed how cute it was,” she later recalled. The bat lay on its stomach, its back to her. She crouched down and decided the safest way to pick it up was by the tips of its wings.
So she did.
As she was about to place it in a tree, the bat bit her left index finger.
“It did manage to stretch over and bite me in the finger, and that hurt,” Jeanna said. “I always get asked, ‘Did it hurt? Did you feel it?’ Yeah, I felt it.”
Her mother treated the bite with hydrogen peroxide. They decided not to seek medical attention.
It seemed like nothing—a tiny bite. No big deal.
Thirty-seven days later.
On October 13, 2004, Jeanna took the PSAT with her sophomore class. She felt extremely tired—sick.
The next day, she woke up barely able to move. But her volleyball team had a game that night. She couldn’t let them down.
During warm-ups, her vision doubled. She almost passed out multiple times. She told her coach she was too sick to play.
“I cried because I couldn’t play,” she remembered. “I didn’t know what was wrong with me, and I actually fell asleep—or passed out—randomly throughout the game.”
Her condition worsened: tremors, trouble walking. Her parents rushed her to St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac.
Doctors tested for meningitis, Lyme disease—everything came back negative.
They were stumped.
As Jeanna’s condition deteriorated, she was transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa.
Dr. Rodney Willoughby, a pediatric infectious disease specialist new to the hospital, ordered tests to the Centers for Disease Control in Georgia.
The diagnosis came back: rabies.
“Well, I thought she was going to die,” Dr. Willoughby said. “That’s what they all did. That was the extent of my knowledge at the time—there wasn’t much to do. It’s really 100% fatal.”
Rabies kills by attacking the brain, disrupting breathing, salivation, heartbeat. Victims drown in their own saliva, suffocate from muscle spasms, or die from heart failure.
There is no treatment. There is no cure.
But Dr. Willoughby wasn’t ready to give up.
He had a radical, untested, desperate idea.
“Most rabies patients die because the brain overstimulates the heart and causes it to stop,” he explained. “So the idea was to suppress the brain—put it to rest so it didn’t work as hard or stop the body from living. It seemed almost too obvious.”
The plan: induce a medically controlled coma, protecting her brain while her immune system fought the virus.
It had never been done before.
Dr. Willoughby told Jeanna’s parents, “It has never been done, and I don’t know if she’ll come out brain-dead.”
Her parents looked at each other and said, “Try the experiment.” Even if she didn’t survive, they hoped doctors would be one step closer to a cure.
On October 18, 2004, Jeanna was put into a coma.
For fourteen days, she lay suspended between life and death.
“They didn’t know if I woke up, if I was going to be me or a vegetable or anything,” Jeanna said.
Her family visited. But Jeanna was trapped in a coma, surrounded by machines, fighting a virus that killed everyone before her.
Seven days in, doctors began bringing her out of the coma.
Then—something incredible happened.
Dr. Willoughby said, “Look over at your mom.”
Jeanna moved her eyes.
“That’s when they said, ‘She’s in there,’” she recalled.
She was alive. Conscious. Fighting.
By the time she was declared virus-free—31 days after admission—Jeanna Giese had become the first person in recorded history to survive rabies after symptoms appeared without receiving timely vaccination.
On January 1, 2005—seventy-six days after hospitalization—Jeanna went home.
Her father wheeled her out. Her mother and three brothers walked beside her. She held a stuffed animal in her lap.
Outside waited a wall of cameras. Every news station wanted footage of the “Rabies Survivor” going home.
But survival wasn’t the end.
“I was basically a newborn baby at 15,” Jeanna said. “I couldn’t do anything.”
She had to relearn walking, talking, writing.
Recovery was long and painful.
“I don’t quit,” she said with a laugh. “I guess it’s personal stubbornness.”
She returned to school with extra help. Despite the setback, she kept pace with her classmates.
In May 2007, she graduated high school with honors.
She attended Marian University in Fond du Lac. She graduated college.
She married Scot Frassetto. At her wedding, she wore a dress that revealed the tattoo on her left shoulder: a flying bat inside a cross, with the words “Miracles Happen” and “September 12, 2004.”
Dr. Willoughby attended the wedding.
Today, Jeanna works at the Children’s Museum of Fond du Lac. She’s a mother of three.
“I always wanted to be a mom, and now I am one,” she said. “It’s just fantastic. I love my kids so much.”
The treatment Dr. Willoughby used became known as the Milwaukee Protocol.
Since 2004, it’s been attempted on other rabies patients.
According to Dr. Willoughby, there are now 45 known rabies survivors. Eighteen survived via the Milwaukee Protocol.
But it doesn’t always work.
Scientists still debate why Jeanna survived—was it a weakened virus? An unusually strong immune system? Aggressive care? Sheer luck?
“Aggressive intensive care, the decision to sedate her, and 10% sheer luck,” Dr. Willoughby said.
Whatever the reason, Jeanna Giese proved the impossible: you can survive rabies.
Twenty years later, Jeanna still loves animals. Even bats.
“A lot of people are astonished that I actually love bats,” she said.
She’s an ambassador for the Global Alliance for Rabies Control, raising awareness and telling her story.
She reminds everyone: if you’re bitten by a wild animal, seek medical attention immediately.
Because rabies is still 100% fatal—unless you’re one of the lucky few.
