SHORT STORIES
My Tetanus Experience

Analaba Praise
300-level Physiotherapy
Bowen University
I had just begun learning to sew. It was my first day at work and I wanted to give my madam a good impression about me, so I began cleaning the shop. I had tried to open the back door earlier but unfortunately, it didn’t budge, so I left it and continued cleaning.
Praise—that was her son’s name. He came into the shop and tried opening the back door as well but it proved difficult so I decided to give him a hand. While he tried pushing from the outside, I pulled from the inside and almost immediately, I felt a slight pain on my wrist. Acting on reflex, I withdrew my right hand and, to my surprise, I was bleeding. I acted like it didn’t hurt, but it did—like hell it did. Praise took leftover material from a client’s cloth and wrapped it around my wrist to stem the bleeding, all the while apologising. After a while, the bleeding stopped and I forgot about the injury and went back to work.
A week passed and the pain returned. It started from my forearm, gradually moved up my arm and stopped at my shoulder. There was a weakness in my muscles, and I found it difficult flexing and extending my upper limbs. I realized exactly how serious it was when my right eye began twitching, but then I told myself I could still endure it. One morning, as the day dawned like many before it, I woke up and could barely use my right arm. The pain became unbearable, so I took an analgesic and was relieved for a while; by evening, it came back with a vengeance. I went into my mother’s room and told her how I felt and narrated the events that led up to it. “Chim! Nwata a, I gaghi egbu m”, came her response in alarm—”My God! This child, you will not kill me”.
As a medical student, I should have known better—I did know better—than to avoid taking the vaccine, TT, but the memory of younger me crying when given those injections clouded my judgement and I made a mistake I wasn’t sorry for. It was going to be infected, I knew that for sure. We got to the hospital, the doctor confirmed that it was infected and he wasn’t polite about it. He was, in fact, really angry—I could tell because he wore his disappointment like a mask. I apologised, and he was soon laughing as I related my fear, and the origin thereof, to him. He prescribed Augmentin 625mg and Kimoral for me and asked me to return later in the day to have the wound cleaned.
I felt relief when I started using the medicine—the pain was largely reduced, and only returned slightly when I stressed myself unnecessarily. I got better by the day—my muscles became stronger, I could grasp objects, and moving became a lot easier. In all, I’m glad the infection was not as terrible as it had seemed.
I know a lot of people fear injections and treatments, but honestly, sometimes, occasion demands that we be bold. When you experience a deviation from what you know to be the normal body functions, please do make a report to a parent or guardian or even at a hospital. My people say Ahụike bụ ndụ—Health is life.
P. S.
Click here to watch our YouTube video with Dr Kiki Omeili | Doctor and Actress in Nollywood
Click here to watch our YouTube video on why you shouldn’t study Medicine at the University.
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