Tetanus booster

I had to visit the "SPA" today (my counts were apparently critical at 6K - no symptons)I asked my hema if I should have a tetanus booster (haven't had one in many, many years) cos I do a lot of gardening and spent a lot of time in the outdoors. He said it was important to have the booster but didn't know how it would affect my platelets. So I guess I have blood count a couple of days after to check - he didn't mention that tho'. Has anyone had the booster and it affected their platelets? What are your thoughts on this please. Also last weekend I was "fuzzy headed" -similar to "pred head" (I am no longer on pred.tho') He said it was not a sympton of low counts I tend to disagree but he kind of "poo pooed" the idea. Thoughts on that also please. Thanks, wishing everyone high platelets. Christine

Christine,
Some of us absolutely (ME!) get fuzzy at low counts, and fatigue is now a recognized symptom of ITP. Others of us don't get the fuzzy and fatigue. Many have reported doctors in total denial about fatigue as a symptom. So frustrating!

There was a thread not long ago about tetanus booster pros and cons - I started it, I was debating whether to get it. Based on info from the discussion I've decided to NOT get the booster at this time, I'm afraid it could kick me out of remission and there seems to be reasonable opinions that it may not be necessary. Please check out the other thread. (How do folks add links to other threads?)
Erica

:S Speaker at the recent UK ITP Conference said that certain symptoms appear to be common to all autoimmune diseases including fatigue, dizziness, foggy head, blurred vision, dry eye and skin, photosensitivity, bladder problems, memory and concetration problems, insomnia, heat problems (hot flushes), and orthostatic symptoms (low blood pressure on standing up type of thing).

And this even when the ITP is treated and the count high.

By the way I went for a tetanus booster a few years ago and was told that I'd had the maximum lifetime number so didn't need it. I have no idea if this is a general thing or just the whim of that doctors' practice. I will do some research.

Christine,

Here's the link to the discussion that Erica was referring to:
www.pdsa.org/forum/6-general-itp-discussion/13130-how-scary-is-not-getting-tetanus-vacc-risk-info.html

Here's a portion of an article that while it doesn't really give a clear answer, it does provide some food for thought (and I thought it was quite interesting), regarding tetanus and how it is acquired:

Some Horse-sense about Tetanus
Tetanus bacteria are found naturally, and always, in the bowels and droppings of horses. When deep wounds in humans (or even horses) are infected with tetanus bacteria, a toxin is produced which causes the illness also known as "lockjaw" Tetanus has nothing whatsoever to do with rust, by the way. You could go into a chemistry lab, open a jar of iron oxide (rust), rub it on your arm all day and not get tetanus. You could have pure iron oxide injected into your bloodstream or even eat it, and you would likely get sick. It would not, however, be tetanus.

The only reason an old rusty nail is associated with tetanus is that it might now be where horses had once been. Encased spores of tetanus bacteria can survive in a dormant state, like seeds, for eighty years. Stepping on a nail delivers the tetanus bacteria spores into the body as if from a dirty hypodermic needle. So tetanus shots are given to this day, even though horses are so rarely around us any more.

During the Civil War, horses were like trucks and cars are today, performing the same function of personnel and equipment transport. Wagons, cannons, ambulances and officers were all horse powered. Confederate cavalrymen J.E.B Stuart and Bedford Forest had thousands of horses with them at a time. Union cavalry forces were even larger. At the time of the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, Union cavalry general George Stoneman had some 9,000 horses at his command (Furgurson, 1992). Can you imagine what their camps must have been like?

Why are we horsing around with all these numbers? Let me get to my "mane" point: it is remarkable that there were so few cases of tetanus during the Civil War. Battlefield wounds were very numerous, very severe and very dirty. Blood and tissue and horse droppings were everywhere. Lockjaw cases were not. During the 1860's, surgeons did not even wash their hands, let alone their instruments. Tetanus bacteria must have been literally everywhere, with countless infected, ghastly wounds to match. After a typical battle, thousands of men might lay with their innards on the ground. Forget your visions of neat uniforms and waxed mustaches and glory. Pain and disease and mud and filth and horses were this war.

In the course of the Civil War, medical records and statistics were maintained and published. This is how we know that many more soldiers were killed by sickness (fever and diarrhea in particular) than by bullets or cannon. Of the over 600,000 soldiers who died in the four years of conflict, at least two out of three died of disease.

We know the death rates from various types of amputation, which ranged from 20 to nearly 90 percent, depending on location. And, we know that "lockjaw" cases placed far down on the casualty lists, and numbered surprisingly few: 2,050 cases per 100,000 wounds, a rate of just over 2 percent (Miller, 1994). That, with no sterilization of medical instruments, and not a pair of clean hands in sight. And with all those horses around.

There were still one or two Civil War veterans alive when I was a very little boy in Rochester, New York. There also were just a few working horses left. I can remember horse teams drawing the huge rakes that swept the public beaches clean along Lake Ontario. The degree of tetanus exposure on that beach never occurred to most parents. When we cut ourselves, barefoot boys like myself often didn't even tell our parents. Who wanted to be stuck with a hypodermic needle? A lot of the kids on those beaches had not had tetanus shots, and yet (as in the Civil War), the number of tetanus cases was near zero. I never even knew anyone who had had tetanus. It was, I think, more than just a matter of luck.

When it comes to eradicating tetanus, I think you could make as glowing an argument for the internal combustion engine as you can for vaccination. As gasoline powered vehicles totally replaced horses, there must have been drastic reductions in our exposure to tetanus bacteria.

To bend the needle a bit further, let's look at another kind of injection against tetanus. Over forty years ago, Frederick R. Klenner, M.D. cured tetanus with massive doses of vitamin C (Klenner, 1954 a, b). In some treatments, Dr. Klenner used as much as 250,000 milligrams of vitamin C per day, most of it intravenously. Between 350 to 1,000 mg of vitamin C per kilogram body weight per day was his standard therapeutic oral dose. (Klenner, 1979). While he was indeed in favor of vaccination, Dr. Klenner described tetanus fatalities as being due to conventional medical treatments for the disease and not due to tetanus itself (Smith, 1988).

I offer neither an argument against horses nor against those who freely choose vaccination. This chapter is presented, like one side of a good debate, to get you past the sound bytes and to look into the subject yourself. The human body is almost unbelievably resilient. Perhaps a bridle needs to be put on over-praising or over-using the tetanus shot. Today, horses are rare and shots are the rule. Let us take a moment and accurately recall the days when it was the other way around.

Personally, I rely on the Homeopathic "Tetanus Vaccines"--one dose of Ledum 200C after a puncture wound, such as a nail, bullet wound or an animal bite, followed the next day, by one dose of Hypericum 200C. If the danger of tetanus was from a severe burn, I would use Arnica in high potency to treat both the burn and act as prophylaxis against tetanus. These three remedies, Ledum, Hypericum and Arnica, have been used successfully by homeopaths for over 200 years to prevent tetanus, in both animals and humans.

Erica,
To add a link, just do a search if you need to, go to the discussion and copy and paste the URL into your reply, being sure you highlight the URL and click on the icon above with the earth behind it, so that the link will open..

April

Fatigue, dizziness, fogheaded, insomnia, memory, consentration are all ones I experience even when my counts are good. I am wondering if when ones counts drop into the single K's does it cause some form of neurological damage??

April did I miss where you cited your source?

Bullet wound - you have treated a bullet wound?


www.mayoclinic.com/health/tetanus/DS00227/DSECTION=causes
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staff

The bacteria that cause tetanus, Clostridium tetani, are found in soil, dust and animal feces. When they enter a deep flesh wound, spores of the bacteria may produce a powerful toxin, tetanospasmin, which actively impairs your motor neurons, nerves that control your muscles. The effect of the toxin on your nerves can cause muscle stiffness and spasms — the major signs of tetanus.


Dean that would be a good question to ask your doctor - I've never heard anything like that but who knows.

The info about horse poop and tetanus is on two sites, one an anti-vacc site and the other seems to be some sort of Saudi Arabia medical info site, I can't tell who owns it.
Here's the google results:
www.google.com/search?q=%22horses+were+like+trucks+and+cars+are+today%22&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1
I guess the phrase 'horses were like trucks and cars are today' just isn't used in a lot of writing! It brought me right to the source.

It's kind of fun to track down citations to keep my black belt in google-fu, but I do agree it is helpful to post the source of information so we don't all have to look it up for ourselves.
Erica

LOL! Well no wonder the source wasn't cited. I'm still trying to figure out:
"Personally, I rely on the Homeopathic.....after a puncture wound, such as a....., bullet wound or..... ". In most cities don't bullet wounds have to be reported to the police?

I think you are the Queen of google-fu Erica!!

Probably a doctor would have to report a bullet wound but if you don't go to a doctor then I don't know who would be obligated to report it as long as the wound wasn't in a vulnerable child or other vulnerable person. I could look it up but I don't want to push my luck.
Erica

I think you are right Erica - it probably would be a doctor or nurse at hospital or ER who need to report a bullet wound. Maybe requirements are different in each state. Wonder how many she has treated.

The original article was written by Dr. Andrew W.Saul, in his monthly newsletter. His is not an "anti-vaccine" website, but a natural healing website. As it is intended as more of a conversational newsletter, recounting his own experiences and opinions, he does not include all sorts of references (but you will find full references in his book). Mostly he was making some interesting observations (Well, they were interesting to me, anyway. Apparently not to you.), which is why I didn't site the reference. People come on here to ask questions, and if I feel I might have something to offer, I do. There is more than one school of thought, Melinda, and many roads to healing. If someone's interest is sparked, as intelligent, thinking adults, they can do the research and draw their own conclusions. Really, I find it quite patronizing that you act like anyone coming on here hasn't a lick of sense, and you must do all in your power to 'warn' them of any deviant thinking.

His website is:
www.doctoryourself.com/index.html

He is author of the book, “Doctor Yourself: Natural Healing That Works”, which, according to one reviewer, has more references sited than the average reader would like, but he felt necessary to put in, knowing full well how the skeptics demand a reference for every word written.

Here is the reference to the full article in his newsletter, on tetanus.
www.doctoryourself.com/vaccination.html


The "Saudi Arabia" site is called Pediatric Medical News. I know nothing about it, so can't comment on it, but the article was taken from Dr.Saul's newsletter.

Melinda, if you go back and read my posting more carefully, I never claimed that I had treated gunshot wounds, but that they are one cause of tetanus infections. Here is the complete list (taken from the Mayo clinic's website):
Tetanus cases have developed from the following types of injuries:

* Puncture wounds — including from splinters, body piercings, tattoos, injection drugs
* Gunshot wounds
* Compound fractures
* Crush injuries
* Burns
* Surgical wounds
* Ear infections
* Dental infections
* Animal bites
* Infected foot ulcers in people with diabetes
* Infected umbilical stumps in newborns born of inadequately immunized mothers

But, if you must know, I have treated two cases of gunshot wounds in humans, and four in animals. In both human cases, medical care was sought, and of course the police were notified--one was a drunken, homeless vet who had been severely beaten and shot, and me and my kids just happened to be the first persons he stumbled upon. As a first responder, I was required to do all I could to render aid, something that I don't think many people out there would bother with. (He stunk, he was drunk, he was obnoxiously drunk.) The other was my mother who was shot in the arm as she was driving with her window open, by a couple of 13 year olds messing around with the hunting gun one of them had just gotten. Of course I immediately treated my mom--AND we took her to the ER and called the police. Why would you assume other? But, the remedies helped her almost immediately with the pain. Then, there was some psycho who was shooting dogs and cats in our neighborhood for a time, and I helped my neighbors with treating them immediately, before and after they were taken to the vet. They all recovered quickly, and appeared to suffer little pain. None of their wounds became infected, either.

I will ALWAYS render first-aid to any living being that needs it. Homeopathy is fantastic for emergency care. In each of these cases, there was a very dramatic difference in just a few minutes time. I have colleagues who have traveled to Third World countries in war-torn areas or after natural disasters, in connection with Homeopaths Without Borders. They have had the opportunity to treat more patients than they'd like, that have bullet wounds or horrible wounds, in filthy conditions.

If you want to do something positive with your google skills, look some of these up. You might be surprised and enlightened.

Or, you can sit around and continue to make catty remarks -it certainly makes the world a better place.