Middie
23-06-18, 21:48
Hi everybody! I hope I do this right. I'm new here and feeling a bit shy about posting. But I needed a place to air some of my worries, and maybe get others' opinions, because I can't help feeling a little dumb when I mention this to any of my friends and family. They're all, of course, convinced it's nothing but I'm not so sure deep down. That's why we're all here, right?
A week ago, my brother pulled up some carpet here to fix a hole in the floor outside of my room. As I stepped over the area, my heel came down on what I guess was one of the upturned staples? Something small and sharp in any case. I pressed on the wound a bit with a paper towel until the bleeding stopped a minute or two later then ran it under water and put antibacteria cream on it a couple of times throughout the day. I don't think it was very deep, but it's a small puncture so it's kinda hard to tell.
For the first day after that, the area of the wound was sore and red. But over time it's gotten better to where now there's no redness and no soreness at all and I can walk on it without thinking about it (though I always keep it bandaged and covered). Every now and then, though, when I'm sitting, I feel it do... something. Twitch or pulse or something. Never in a painful way but in a way that always draws my attention back to it. And I worry about the day after it happened when I was helping my mom put up a bird feeder and I didn't realize my bandaid had come loose when I was reaching up to hang the feeder, and then my heel came back down right on the dirt. I scrubbed it with soap and water when I got back inside but still. That's bad right?
I wish my mom had never made the joke but she mentioned something about tetanus when I told her about the staple. And ever since then I've been in a downward spiral because I have no idea when my last tetanus shot was. And part of me keeps wishing I had taken this whole thing THIS seriously back when there was still a window to just go and get the booster. But I hear that it's not really much use after the first 3 days of the wound, and it's been 7 days now. Well, still useful for the future sure but not for now, which is what I'm most concerned about.
The real problem is that my body was sore at the start of this. My mom is in a wheelchair and needs to be helped a lot, pushed and pulled and lifted. And I did a lot more of that earlier in the past week than usual which led a lot of my body to being sore at the start of this. And, boy, that's reeeeally been bad for this situation. Every muscle that's sore, that becomes stiff, that twitches, is the tetanus creeping in. Or so I like to convince myself.
I can't help but feel like everything is strange and off and SOMETHING is going on. It's also the worst that tetanus can have such a long incubation time. So I feel like I'm just sitting around waiting for it to show up any minute. Like, any day now my jaw is going to snap shut. I've had more than a few panic attacks over it. And now I've even gotten myself worked up to the point where I lose sleep over this. Every night for the past two or three nights, right before falling asleep, I snap myself awake again in some way. Sometimes by a limb jerking suddenly or me making an involuntary noise or my muscles tensing up reeeal tight. Or even shortness of breath. I'm hoping this is just my anxiety at work again and not a sign. I pretty much have to take a benadryl or something to knock myself out if I want to sleep.
I even went so far as to try that spatula test thing. But I'm not sure when it's best to try that, like if it can be done at any time or if it has to be done within a certain time frame. Or if it even really works. I don't know. It was a small comfort at the time but now I've talked myself back out of it. Like I tend to do.
Sorry for the long post about it. I've had a lot of time to just sit and think and worry over it. Especially since I'm in the US and don't have health insurance so it's not like I can show up at the doctor's and ask them about everything going on with me without it being costly. So it's just been me, myself, and I. And the tetanus.
A week ago, my brother pulled up some carpet here to fix a hole in the floor outside of my room. As I stepped over the area, my heel came down on what I guess was one of the upturned staples? Something small and sharp in any case. I pressed on the wound a bit with a paper towel until the bleeding stopped a minute or two later then ran it under water and put antibacteria cream on it a couple of times throughout the day. I don't think it was very deep, but it's a small puncture so it's kinda hard to tell.
For the first day after that, the area of the wound was sore and red. But over time it's gotten better to where now there's no redness and no soreness at all and I can walk on it without thinking about it (though I always keep it bandaged and covered). Every now and then, though, when I'm sitting, I feel it do... something. Twitch or pulse or something. Never in a painful way but in a way that always draws my attention back to it. And I worry about the day after it happened when I was helping my mom put up a bird feeder and I didn't realize my bandaid had come loose when I was reaching up to hang the feeder, and then my heel came back down right on the dirt. I scrubbed it with soap and water when I got back inside but still. That's bad right?
I wish my mom had never made the joke but she mentioned something about tetanus when I told her about the staple. And ever since then I've been in a downward spiral because I have no idea when my last tetanus shot was. And part of me keeps wishing I had taken this whole thing THIS seriously back when there was still a window to just go and get the booster. But I hear that it's not really much use after the first 3 days of the wound, and it's been 7 days now. Well, still useful for the future sure but not for now, which is what I'm most concerned about.
The real problem is that my body was sore at the start of this. My mom is in a wheelchair and needs to be helped a lot, pushed and pulled and lifted. And I did a lot more of that earlier in the past week than usual which led a lot of my body to being sore at the start of this. And, boy, that's reeeeally been bad for this situation. Every muscle that's sore, that becomes stiff, that twitches, is the tetanus creeping in. Or so I like to convince myself.
I can't help but feel like everything is strange and off and SOMETHING is going on. It's also the worst that tetanus can have such a long incubation time. So I feel like I'm just sitting around waiting for it to show up any minute. Like, any day now my jaw is going to snap shut. I've had more than a few panic attacks over it. And now I've even gotten myself worked up to the point where I lose sleep over this. Every night for the past two or three nights, right before falling asleep, I snap myself awake again in some way. Sometimes by a limb jerking suddenly or me making an involuntary noise or my muscles tensing up reeeal tight. Or even shortness of breath. I'm hoping this is just my anxiety at work again and not a sign. I pretty much have to take a benadryl or something to knock myself out if I want to sleep.
I even went so far as to try that spatula test thing. But I'm not sure when it's best to try that, like if it can be done at any time or if it has to be done within a certain time frame. Or if it even really works. I don't know. It was a small comfort at the time but now I've talked myself back out of it. Like I tend to do.
Sorry for the long post about it. I've had a lot of time to just sit and think and worry over it. Especially since I'm in the US and don't have health insurance so it's not like I can show up at the doctor's and ask them about everything going on with me without it being costly. So it's just been me, myself, and I. And the tetanus.