Take it from one who knows —lockjaw can be pretty gruesome.
You can't eat. You can't drink. You can't even talk.
Your hair is liable to start turning gray overnight. And you spend most of your waking hours taking tetanus shots, getting fed intravenously or writing notes to make your needs known to the nurses.
"But even at that I guess I'm lucky to be alive," said) Mrs. Octave David of Gretna, sweeWaced mother of nine. "They tell me lots of people die of lockjaw."
Mhl David, who was laid up lor six weeks with the dread disease, said she also feels pretty lucky about saving her teeth.
*I didn't know I was going Into lockjaw/9 she explained, "but when my jaw began getting stiff I had sort of a hunch. So I took my teeth out of my mouth, placed them in a little box, then put the box in a drawer of my bedside table. It's a good thing I did. The next morning my jaws were good and locked. If I had left those teeth in my mouth they would have gotten all cracked up«"
RECALLS HURTS IN FALL
Mrs. David said on Oct. 26 she was walking through the back door of her Gretna home at 1034 Seventh when she tripped on a door mat and went tumbling down the back steps.
She cut her forehead, cut her lips, suffered a compound fracture of her nose. The minute they saw her, physicians at the Algiers General Hospital realized they faced a real problem. If they dug deep enough to
clean out all the imbedded debris in her nose, the patient would have no nose left. And so they cut as deep as they dared, gave Mrs. David a shot of tetanus antitoxin and hoped for the best.
i The fall victim returned home but soon she was back at the hospital, this time complaining she was having trouble eating.
She was ordered to bed and doctors began pumping into her massive doses of tetanus antitoxin. As one hospital attache put it, "I never saw anyone patient get so much tetanus antitoxin in my life."
On Nov. 3, Mrs. David's mouth began to feel stiff. On Nov. 4, she couldn't open her mouth.
DOCTORS PERSEVERE
And so the struggle to save her life got under way. At times it looked like a touch-and-go proposition. But physicians refused to give up. Counts less specialists were called in on the case. In addition to the antitoxin, tranquilizers and antibiotics were administered. At one point physicians contem-
plated performing a tracheotomy.
" Why did we consider making a surgical Incision into Mrs. David's windpipe?" One doctor repeated the question. "Well by this time her jaws were locked tight. Say she had to vomit. She certainly couldn't expel it through her mouth. So there was always the possibility she'd cfeoke to death."
Frantic with worry, Mrs. David's longshoreman husband kept a nightly vigil at her bedside.
Mrs. David was also worried During the long miserable days §nd nights she worried about what might happen to her
youngest child, 10-year-oL Kathelen, who always looke< to "Mom" for everything. Sb worried when she learned tha her 17-year-old daughter, Julia was trying to do the family cooking. Supposed she burnei herself or accidentally set fin to the house?
PRAYER ONLY SOLACE Recalling this time of horror Mrs. David said prayer was he only solace; that she prayei constantly.
"I prayed to St. Ann because she was the mother of the Blessed Virgin," she explained. "I kept saying to myself that maybe St. Ann would tell the Blessed Mother about my nine children and that, being a moth-
er herself, she would understand hew I didn't want to leave them."
Mrs. David said during the six weeks spent in the hospital her hair, which had been completely free of gray on her arrival, began showing definite signs of grayness.
When the patient finally got well, everyone agreed her recovery was little short of mi-j raculous. But doctors, who once a year stage an all-out cam-! paign to get everyone to takej preventative tetanus toxoid! shots, said Mrs. Davis could have saved herself a lot of grief had she gone in for that "old ounce of prevention." MORE PREVALENT IN LA.
Dr. Richard A. Faust, who is
cBSirman of the tetanus protection committee of the Orleans Parish Medical Society, said tetanus is 10 times more prevalent in Louisiana than in the nation as a whole.
And in adults, he explained, it is about 50 per cent fatal. "If people would only take their toxoid shots," added the committee chairman, "why there are thousands of persons who only need a booster. During World War II, for instance, all service men and women received their initial series of shots. Their immunity lacks only the stimulus of booster injection."
Dr. Faust said some people will argue "Why go to so much bother? If I step on a nail I'll get a shot then?"
The chairman said this is faulty reasoning. PERMITS GERM TO ENTER "To begin with" he explained, "a scratch or puncture wound is often so tiny the patient isn't even conscious it's there. But it's seldom too small to permit entrance of the tetanus germ And it doesn't do a bit of good to start the tetanus toxoid series after you've had the injury.1 Dr. Faust said the only thing which helps at this point is the tetanus antitoxin, often referred to as horse serum.
Unfortunately, he explained, many persons are violently allergic to horse serum and after they take the shots they break out in hives and become desperately ill.
Also, said the committee chairman, tetanus antitoxin seldom affords 100 per cent immunity as Mrs. Davis's case Droves.
'Tetanus toxoid, by contrast, does afford 100 per cent immunity. Also tetanus antitoxin protects for only a few short weeks while if you keep up your boosters, tetanus antitoxin provides lifelong immunity." PHOTO: MRS. OCTAVE DAVID of Gretna and her husband feel her jaws which became locked because of tetanus caused by cuts she received in a fall in her home. She spent six weeks in the hospital and received massive doses of tetanus antitoxin before recovering from the often fatal disease.
