It was a hot summer day in July of 2004 and I was remodeling our small farm house that we had just bought. While replacing the siding I stepped on an old rusty insulation nail that penetrated through my shoe deep into the sole of my foot.
After managing to pull out the nail we treated the wound and even though I was in pain at first, we did not go to see the doctor. We did watch for signs of blood poisoning but that was about all we did. After a few days I was back to walking normal and didn’t think much about it anymore.
It all changed when after 9 days I woke up at night and felt the urge to go to the bathroom. On my way to the bathroom I noticed that my hands were a little slow to respond and felt awkward when moving my fingers. At that point I didn’t think much about it and went back to bed only to find myself waking up a short while later. I felt something was off and after I got up I noticed that my jaw was slow to respond and felt very stiff. That’s when we connected the dots.
We didn’t know much about tetanus but we knew these were signs of it and immediately went to the emergency room. On the sign-in form I simply wrote “stepped on a rusty nail 9 days ago and now have tetanus symptoms”. I was ushered into the ER where they immediately took an x-ray of my foot. After waiting over an hour the doctor finally came and said that they didn’t find anything. He asked if I really had experienced tetanus symptoms and I told him, about how I experienced the stiffness in my jaw.
The doctor went on and suggested that it was probably an overreaction and I imagined it, which can happen in situations like this.
As we left the emergency room early that morning I second guessed myself and conceded that I might have overreacted.
