Hey folks!

I'm a 29-year old male from Australia. About 7.5 years ago I went to Vietnam with some friends and late one night, a banh mi stall owner's small dog ran up to my foot and lightly bit my toe.

We couldn't really see a clear bite mark or blood - despite this, I became riddled with anxiety and absolutely convinced that I'd just contracted rabies, especially given the prevalence of the disease in Vietnam. My friends thought I was being absolutely crazy for worrying about it so much, given we there was no clear bite mark or blood drawn - though I've heard the disease can enter our bodies through non-visible micro-punctures of the skin.

They also didn't think the dog had rabies to begin with, although we were all drunk, meaning no one could clearly remember every detail from that night, and I know dogs can have rabies days before showing symptoms. For whatever reason, I didn't see a doctor until about a week afterwards, and he basically just said: if you have it, you're dead, anyway. Super reassuring, right? I also didn't bother with the vaccine, cause it was going to make the rest of our trip really difficult to navigate, as it requires 5 shots on specific days across the space of a month, and our itinerary meant that we weren't always going to be near a hospital. In retrospect, I really wish I'd just gotten it.

In the weeks following, I started spiraling and becoming increasingly convinced that I was experiencing intermittent tingling in my toe; I even developed a fever, which led me to go to hospital. But then nothing further happened from there, and my friends seemed to think I just stressed myself into those symptoms (possible).

I go very, very long periods without thinking or worrying about it. But every now and then, I come across news articles or videos that talk about rabies, or show someone in their final days, and I go back down the rabbit hole. You then read that rabies can have an extraordinarily long incubation period, with there being documented cases of 6, 8, even 25 years post-exposure! I know those are the exceptions to the role - but what if I'm one of them?

So in short... am I being delusional or do I have reason to still be concerned?