Listen to Me and Listen to Me Good

If you have not had a tetanus shot in the last 10 years, go get one immediately. I'm not even kidding. Take your hand off the mouse and run to get one.

How was my weekend? Well it sucked ass due to a dose of tetanus...otherwise known as lock jaw. Go google tetanus or lockjaw and come back and read the rest of this.

3 weeks ago, I stabbed myself in the hand with a corn on the cob holder. 6 days after that, I started to get a sore jaw. I didn't think much of it. But as time went on over the last 2 weeks it got progressively worse each day. I was unable to open my mouth wide enough to yawn, yet I couldn't close it enough to make my molars touch in the back. My ear started to hurt, my teeth hurt, my face hurt, my head hurt. Then the base of my skull started to hurt, the next day my neck hurt, then my shoulders and finally my back down to the bottom of my shoulder blades. My back hurting started this Wednesday.
I had a doctor's appointment on Thursday for something completely different. Rewind here for a minute - I need to add I've cut myself a few times over the past few months and my brother-in-law, Jon, always tells me to get a tetanus shot or I'll get lock jaw. Back to the present, Wednesday before my appt the next morning, I googled lock jaw just for kicks. Holy shit! I had most of the symptoms. The only ones I didn't have were convulsions, coma, and respiratory arrest.
Thursday morning arrives and I feel like I've been hit by a truck. I even called in sick to work. When I got to my appt, I described my symptoms to the nurse and then added that I'd cut myself and not had a tetanus shot in at least 15 years. She looked at me and said "You have lock jaw." A medical student hears my story and says the same thing. Then my doctor gets a rundown from the med student. He stick his head in the room and says "We think you have tetanus. We need to call an infectious disease specialist in Saint John to get advice on how to treat you." I wait in the waiting room while they call. After awhile they tell me they are calling someone in Halifax.
So I sat there for over an hour thinking they would write me a prescription for pain and some sort of antibiotic. WRONG. The med student eventually comes out and take me into the hallway and says "We spoke to Halifax and you need to go to the hospital immediately. Do not go anywhere else, go straight there. There is an internist (internal medicine doctor) waiting for you in the ER. Go right now. You could go into respiratory arrest any minute and you may be admitted to ICU. You need to be monitored very closely. You could die from this." I say okay and off I go. Needless to say, I'm bawling my face off, I can't get out of the damn parking lot because I'm too worked up to put money in the machine to let me out. I'm a mess and driving myself to the hospital.
I arrived at the ER, walked to the triage area sure enough, they were waiting for me. I could hear a bunch of people saying my name and saying "She's here. That's her." I'm losing my mind at this point. A nice clerk comes over and says "Are you Sarah?" I said yes and she says "Janet is on the phone. She wants to know if you want her to come. " Thanks, Jan. I said I was okay she didn't need to come. Thankfully, she showed up later regardless.

Within 20 minutes (I think) I was registered to talking to the internal medicine specialist resident. One of the first things the Dr. tells me is that only 4 people had this in all of Canada last year. Luckily it seems I only have a mild case. Before the end of a 2 hour span, I saw the resident, her boss doctor and the head of ICU. At this point, I'm realizing this is serious. The told me I was not going home because I needed to be watched closely. From what I understand, because the disease was progressing through my body, it could affect the muscles in my chest and stop me from breath. I would be unable to speak to even call for help. Super f'ing fantastic.

My cousin, showed up just after I was told that part of my treatment would be 12 shots one right after the other. That right, TWELVE SHOT ONE AFTER THE OTHER. Sure makes that one tetanus shot sound like a walk in the park, huh? Get a tetanus shot right now.
I had to stay in the ER for at least an hour after the shots in case I reacted. The doctor said if I reacted they'd be able to do more for me in the ER than on a floor. Doesn't give warm fuzzy feelings, does it?
Jan and I had alot of laughs in the ER. She also kept showing me off to her co-workers. She would say "This is my cousin. She has lock jaw!" No one but my family doctor and my cousin had the opportunity to see tetanus in real life before. It's that rare. Rare because most of the population is smart enough to get a tetanus shot. But not me. Go get one now.

So I spent Thursday to this morning, Saturday in the hospital hooked up to a heart monitor and an IV. FYI - the meds that I got through the IV every 6 hours burned like crazy. Get a damn shot this instant. I was very happy to come home today because the last couple of days have sucked like you cannot imagine.
So all this action was for a mild case of tetanus. Makes me damn thankful it was mild. Apparently, in the serious cases, they have to paralyze the patient because the muscle spasms can be so violent they can break their own bones.

Yesterday, the internal medicine resident asked me if she could write a case report on me because tetanus is so rare and I said yes. My doctor also told me his med student was very excited by my case. I'm just doing my part for the medical cause.

There is no test they can do at the hospital to say whether or not I really have tetanus. They have to send my blood work to Ontario and it takes 2-3 weeks for the results. Because the disease is so serious, if they think you have it they need to treat you right away.

I kept smiling and laughing through all of this but I'll be honest. Every time I felt any twinge in my body I was afraid I was going to stop breathing. I tried to convince myself it was no big deal. But laying in hospital Thursday night, unable to sleep and nothing to do but think. I could not help but see my daughter's face and I think she could have lost her mother because I was too lazy to get a tetanus shot. This is a serious disease and could have been much, much worse. It all could have been avoided if I'd gotten a tetanus shot. Please don't let your tetanus vaccination get out of date. It's an avoidable disease and it's just not worth the risk. I'm also very thankful that Jon likes to tease me. Otherwise I may not have mentioned it to my doctor and it could have been too late by the time I relized how sick I was.

This story might be a bit rambly and disjointed but it's still somewhat surreal to me. Jan please feel free to correct any information that is inaccurate.