Boy spent 47 agonizing days in ICU with tetanus. Parents still refuse vaccines

[workinclasszero]

Wracked with pain, unable to open his mouth, he was intubated and sedated for weeks.

BETH MOLE - 3/8/2019, 4:40 PM

The young son of anti-vaccine parents endured excruciating pain and spent 47 days in pediatric intensive care after contracting tetanus, a devastating bacterial infection easily prevented by vaccines.

Despite the nightmarish ordeal, his parents still refused to have him vaccinated, according to health officials in Oregon who helped treat the boy. They reported the boy’s harrowing case Friday, March 8, in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, an online publication from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The six-year-old Oregon boy contracted tetanus—also called lockjaw—innocently enough. He got a cut on his forehead while playing on his family’s farm in 2017. The boy’s wound was treated and sutured at home. Six days later, he showed signs of tetanus.

Tetanus is caused by the bacterium Clostridium tetani, which is found in soil and produces a toxin that causes painful muscle contractions. The boy’s symptoms started as crying fits, jaw clenching, muscle spasms, and neck and back arching. The same day, he started having trouble breathing, at which point his parents contacted emergency medical services, who quickly air-lifted him to a pediatric medical center.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/boy-spent-47-agonizing-days-in-icu-with-tetanus-parents-still-refuse-vaccines/

[Demovictory9]

1. Sutured at home ?

[Mariana]

3. That alone should get them arrested and charged for child abuse.

If that really happened, their asses should be in jail. What the hell did they give the kid for pain relief, if anything? It's also possible that they introduced the tetanus bacteria into the wound, and/or created an especially hospitable environment for it, with their home treatment. And then they stood by when he developed scary symptoms, and didn't call for help until it got so bad he had trouble breathing. These are dangerous people. The kid needs out of their care.

[kcr]

4. That alone is a red flag

Parents who abuse their kids pull shit like that to stay under the radar.

[pnwmom]

5. He lives on a farm. Ranchers and farmers often live at quite a distance from medical care

and learn to do more first aid than many of us urban/suburban people would ever attempt. I don't know his particular situation, but I know some ranchers who live a couple hours away from the nearest rural town with doctors.

[Bleacher Creature]

2. The parents should be arrested for child endangerment and the kid moved to a safer home.

This is inexcusable.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. By contrast, I grew up with my father who was a doctor.

If any of us got so much as papercut-like laceration outside, with something metal, we had to have a booster tetanus shot, provided it wasn't ten years (then it was a full tetanus shot).