Tetanus Shot

When I was a kid, nothing scared me more than “getting a tetanus shot.” I’d see a rusty nail and I’d think – tetanus shot. I’d see a saw hanging on the wall in our basement – tetanus shot. Fish-hooks on my dad’s gear in the garage – tetanus shot. I was in near paranoia up until age ten or twelve or so of cutting myself on a piece of metal. You know, because that would necessitate “getting a tetanus shot.”

Now this is not without justification. When I was three or four we lived in a two-family house a few towns over. A group of older kids would always be hanging around. One time, playing hide and seek while I was bumbling about on my tricycle, a boy snuck over the edge of the balcony on the house and lowered himself down. Onto a pile of boards, and his foot went directly onto a rusty nail. Cloudy memories of him yelping in pain, hopping away, drops of blood on the cement sidewalk. It was around this time that I first heard the dreaded phrase, “tetanus shot.”

I probably got one when I was a wee young-un, but of course I don’t remember. I do know for certain that I’ve never had one as an adult. Never had cause to.

Today, however, I got a tetanus shot.

Don’t go thinking I suddenly started working with scrap metal or something. Nor have I turned my garage into a wood shop. No, I simply went for a routine physical, and as an afterthought, my doctor asked me, “When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?”

Those of you who know me or who have read this blog, know that this is the Me 2.0. The fearless me. Fearless as regarding shots and the like, thanks to my ordeal with the ticker three years ago (my how time flies!). In the past four or five years I’ve must’ve had two hundred shots – blood work and pre-op self-administering lovenox, mostly – and have developed somewhat thick skin towards them, no pun intended.

So I casually said I didn’t remember. She recommended one, because of a recent local outbreak of adult whooping cough. Apparently the tetanus virus – or whatever – helps defeat that as well as diphtheria, though there are no local outbreaks of diphtheria.

I nodded and signed the paperwork. A few minutes later a nurse came in to give it to me. Right in the deltoid muscle of my right arm.

Outwardly I was placid, but inwardly I steeled myself for pain. The image of me holding Little One’s legs down as an inch of hypodermic steel went straight into her thigh popped into my mind. The nurse swabbed my shoulder liberally with icy antiseptic, and I sort of felt something –

And that was it. No pain, barely a scratch. Must be what an acupuncture needle feels like, was my first thought.

“You’ll probably be sore tomorrow morning,” the nurse said as she stuck a band-aid on my upper arm. “Might be stiff, might be limited mobility, but only for a little while.”

“Okay.” I kinda doubted her. I even doubted for a second that I received an injection.

That was four hours ago. I did have a metallic taste in my mouth for a while and my right shoulder is now a bit sore, like I did a couple extra reps of a little too heavy weight doing some lateral dumbbell raises. Oh well.

My whole point is, I guess, that things are never as bad as how we fear they’re going to be. Almost wished I had to get a tetanus shot at age eight. Would’ve saved me a couple of years of useless anxiety.

(And wait – isn’t all anxiety “useless”?)

Well, that was the highlight of my day. Yours?