Tetanus injections...know anything?

[lcorteen]

Re: Tetanus injections...know anything?

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Thanks for posting Ladies. Definately food for thought. This has been on my mind lately with having to fill in school forms

xx

[Emily33]

Re: Tetanus injections...know anything?

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I cut my finger 4 years ago with a clean kitchen knife. Googled tetanus at the time and read somewhere that one has up to 72 hours to take the shot. Takes 21 days for the symptoms to show. You might want to double check that.

Went to Emergency Dept and the doctor there gave me a guilt trip and told me that if I was his family he would insist on me having it. Well, doc, I'm not and I have checked it out and will sit on it for the next 24 hours before rushing into it.

One of my GPs (pro-choice with regard to vax'ing), gave me her comments of each of the vaccines and said that tetanus is the one that concerns her. You can pick it up at the beach on wet, dirty sand and even if you wash it out there's a chance that a bit of the muck stays in and turns into tetanus. Doesn't necessarily have to be a rusty nail. Anyway I've got to do more homework on it. Also she pointed out that kids can't get vaccinated for tetanus on its own in Australia (unlike civilised countries such as Japan) as it's packaged together with diptheria and pertussis (whooping cough) = DPT. And in her words diptheria isn't necessary unless travelling to East Timor and Pertussis is controversial.

Ridiculous we can't get tetanus on it's own for our kids in Australia. Where's the choice in that?

My Mum got a splinter from gardening and her GP gave her the DPT shot without offering her just Tetanus (which is available for adults in Australia). She sees a naturopath but got swayed in the heat of the moment. I'd understand if she felt the need to have the tetanus shot on its own but she didn't know you could get it on it's own. Anyway she was so cross with herself for just going along with the doc and not buying herself some time and asking more questions. When the info is not available to the average person it's not easy to know what questions to ask.

I've got a bottle of homeopathic drops for tetanus in the fridge. I also wonder how effective they'd be and if it came to the crunch what I'd do... But I like to keep my options open and I think I'll weigh it all up at the time.

I haven't vaxed DD and don't intend to unless I think and feel it's necessary.

[bubly]

Re: Tetanus injections...know anything?

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Interesting topic. I need to think more about this, because while I think I'd trust the homeopathics 100%, I wonder if I'd be swayed by a GP in the heat of the moment? It does seem ridiculous that we can't get the tetanus vacc on its own here for children.

[starbuckozzie]

Re: Tetanus injections...know anything?

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Well, I stood on the proverbial rusty nail at lunchtime today. It was in a filthy area, under the house, with stray cat faeces everywhere. It was a puncture wound and didn't bleed much at all even though I sat there trying to force the blood out! I washed it and put tea tree oil on it but after some agonising I ended up going to the doctor for the vax. They didn't have tetanus only and gave me a choice between tetanus/diptheria or tetanus/diptheria/pertussis so I went with the former, having the least components.

No reaction yet but it's only been 1 hour since the injection. I could kick myself for not looking where I was stepping! I rang my herbalist about it and she said normally she'd advise against the vax but something made her think I should do it.

There were a few things putting the pressure on today that probably influenced my decision; my herbalist is out of town until next week, DH is elsewhere in the country and I'm getting on a plane in the morning with the kids. Also I got the injury one hour before I had to be in the pool with lots of kids! I think some of these kind of pushed me into choosing the vax as the (hopefully) lesser of two evils.

Will post again if I get any reaction.