Girl Heads Home After Surviving Rabies

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) -- An eight-year-old girl is heading home after a grueling two-month battle with rabies.

Precious Reynolds walked out of the UC Davis Children's Hospital on Wednesday, 53 days after her grandmother brought her in with a fever that wouldn't go away and a sharp decrease of energy.

To the surprise of the entire medical community, doctors discovered that Precious had contracted rabies and put her in a medically-induced coma to give her brain a chance to heal.

Precious had been scratched by a feral cat near her Willow Creek school. Rabies doesn't show many symptoms until the disease progresses and it was too late to try to treat the illness with a vaccine.

Medical experts say Precious only had a 5 percent chance of survival.

"We knew it was bad, but like a lot of people I thought you get a shot to get rid of it," said Shirlee Roby, Precious' grandmother. "Go one day at a time and just keep pushing her to keep going and get better and stronger every day."

The girl slowly got better, and after countless hours of physical therapy, Precious can walk again. On Wednesday, she was able to walk out the hospital doors and go home with her family.

Doctors will monitor her condition over the next few months. Precious is expected to recover in time to start the third grade this fall.

Officials helped trap a number of feral cats around the school.