Even if You’re Anti-Vax to the Max, Get the Tetanus Shot

Last updated on: June 27, 2025 at 6:33 am by Rebecca Hamilton

Even if You’re Anti-Vax to the Max, Get the Tetanus Shot 2025-06-27T06:33:11-06:00 Rebecca Hamilton

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Patient Suffering from Tetanus, by Sir Charles Bell, Source Wikimedia Commons, public domain

You may be anti-vax to the max. But make an exception to your hatred of vaccines. Make sure your kids get tetanus shots.

Tetanus, even with massive medical intervention, has a mortality rate of 20% among people who have never been vaccinated. The mortality rate declines if the victim has had at least one shot at some point during their lives. But the lowest mortality rate for those who contract tetanus is still around a whopping 15%. Up to date tetanus vaccinations prevent the disease entirely.

Patients with generalized tetanus present with trismus (“lockjaw”), which is the inability to open the mouth secondary to masseter muscle spasm. Nuchal rigidity and dysphagia also are early complaints that cause risus sardonicus, the scornful smile of tetanus, resulting from facial muscle involvement. [3, 4]

As the disease progresses, patients have generalized muscle rigidity with intermittent reflex spasms in response to stimuli (eg, noise, touch). Tonic contractions cause opisthotonos (ie, flexion and adduction of the arms, clenching of the fists, and extension of the lower extremities). During these episodes, patients have an intact sensorium and feel severe pain. The spasms can cause fractures, tendon ruptures, and acute respiratory failure. Medscape.com

That’s why, when you go to the doctor or the hospital for a cut, they always ask, “When was your last tetanus shot?” If there’s any doubt about the timing, just tell them to give you the jab.

The trouble is, it doesn’t take the kind of cut that requires a doctor to give you tetanus.

Tetanus can come on quickly after a minor injury that your child wouldn’t bother to tell you about. Once it has set in, if you are a parent who never had your child vaccinated, you are staring at the 20% chance of your baby dying in agony because of what you didn’t do.

Spores of the bacterium C tetani are found in the soil, and in animal feces and mouth (gastrointestinal tract). In the spore form, C tetani can remain inactive in the soil. But it can remain infectious for more than 40 years.

You can get tetanus infection when the spores enter your body through an injury or wound. The spores become active bacteria that spread in the body and make a poison called tetanus toxin (also known as tetanospasmin). This poison blocks nerve signals from your spinal cord to your muscles, causing severe muscle spasms. The spasms can be so powerful that they tear the muscles or cause fractures of the spine.

The time between infection and the first sign of symptoms is about 7 to 21 days. Nearly all cases of tetanus in the United States occur in those who have not been vaccinated against the disease. Penn Medicine

Not only that, but even if your child survives, they will suffer through a terrible illness, and painful treatments followed by months of rehabilitation, which could still result in lifetime disability. All because you chose not to have them get a simple shot in the arm.

I singled out Tetanus vaccine because the disease is so absolutely horrific and random. It is deadly and totally preventable. It does not spread through a cough or a sneeze or sharing a drink. It is just lying in wait on your garden hoe, the fence railing, the dirt in your front yard.

Your child can step on a nail while playing and not tell you about it. Your child can cut themselves on a fence or one of your tools that they were playing with when they weren’t supposed to and not tell you a thing about it.

The first you would know is when Tetanus hits them. If your child has never been vaccinated for Tetanus, you have a 20% chance of losing them forever.

Even if your baby survives, it will be after agonizing illness which could include being put on a ventilator and every other painful and terrifying remedy modern medicine can throw. It can take months to recover from tetanus. Even then, a fair percentage of the survivors end up with permanent problems, including permanently experiencing tetanus muscle contractions.

Tetanus symptoms happen because the toxin disrupts your nervous system. Your muscles can spasm and relax when your nervous system tells them to. But the tetanus toxin disables nerve signaling that tells muscles to relax. That makes the affected muscles spasm uncontrollably.

The main symptoms include:

Difficulty swallowing (dysphagia) or breathing (dyspnea)

Drooling

Face muscle flexing causing a rigid smile

Inability to open your mouth because of jaw muscle tightness (trismus)

Muscle spasms in your abs, back, arms or legs (which light and sound can trigger)

Overextending your neck and back because of muscle spasms (opisthotonos)

Seizures

Tetanus can also affect your autonomic nervous system. That’s the part that controls automatic functions like breathing and heart rate. Autonomic symptoms usually take several days before they start. When they do, they can include the following:

Fever and sweating

High blood pressure

Fast heart rate (tachycardia)

Uncontrolled peeing (urinary incontinence) and pooping (fecal incontinence)Cleveland Clinic

I am writing this post because I am pro life, I am a mother and a grandmother. If I neglected to get one of my precious babies vaccinated and then they got a dreadful disease like Tetanus, I would want to die myself in their place.

There is not one bit of hesitation in me. I would give my life for them and never count the cost.

I think you feel the same way. Make sure that everyone in your family is vaccinated for Tetanus.

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