More neglect

Last night when I changed the Piggy's diaper, I noticed two identical, round scabs on his little bottom. At first I thought maybe a spider had somehow bitten him, then I decided the spots were too far apart for that, and then I thought it looked for all the world like little snake fang marks. Since I haven't seen any small, venomous snakes creeping around the house, I finally I settled on the theory that he had somehow sat on a staple. This might sound far-fetched, were it not for the fact that we just tore out several hundred square feet of carpet and removed hundreds of carpet pad staples from our floors.

Despite our best efforts to be incredibly thorough about that process, it's not inconceivable that a staple remains undetected, either broken off and sticking up jaggedly, or lying loose on the floor somewhere, and given his close proximity to the floor and his penchant for wallowing around on it, whether playing or tantruming, the Piggy would certainly be the most likely to find it. How it jabbed through his diaper is a separate mystery. Once I had settled on this theory, and given that he didn't seem to be in any discomfort, I decided I wouldn't worry about it, except to keep an eye out myself for the potential hazard and hopefully find and remove it before the injury could recur. It only this afternoon occurred to me that he might have been exposed to a rusty staple -- there were certainly plenty of those -- and that he might be at risk for tetanus. At what age do they even give tetanus immunizations? How soon do symptoms of tetanus emerge?

Now I am in a bit of a paranoid frenzy and I think I am going to have to have Pork Chop call the pediatrician to put my mind at ease.