My critical demo question this week was “When did I get my last tetanus shot?” While helping my son-in-law remove the second story windows of the cabin, I slightly ripped my work pants just to the left of my knee. I walked too close to a three-inch nail protruding out of one of the window frames. I felt some pain at the time but I didn’t think it had done any damage until later that evening.
After a much-needed shower and putting on comfortable clothes including shorts, I was eating dinner and watching the news when I noticed a deep bloody scratch to the left of my knee cap. It hurt when I touched it and that’s when I wondered “When did I get my last tetanus shot?”
Working under dangerous and unsanitary conditions on this cabin rehab has been interesting and a real test of my “guts to take on a fixer upper.” We knew we would be working with mold in the drywall and insulation. We knew there was low levels of asbestos in the floor tile. We knew we would be working around black widow spiders as we discovered two during our inspection. We also knew we would be working with rusty nails and wet, sagging floorboards. We didn’t know we would be working around large red ants and removing at least eight large garbage bags of animal excrement and pinecones discovered deposited in the walls and attic space.
Despite these working conditions, we accomplished a lot this week, as you can see from the photos.
I finally remembered I was immunized with the Tdap vaccine when my granddaughter was born in 2012. At that time I was employed as a high school teacher and my daughter wanted to protect her newborn daughter from pertussis (whooping-cough) so I was vaccinated. Now, that same vaccine is protecting me from contracting tetanus from the rusty nails I encounter during this cabin demo/build.
When did you get your last tetanus shot?
