A 6-year-old boy spent about eight weeks in the hospital -- much of it in a dark room. His parents face nearly $1 million in medical bills. He suffered excruciating pain and lost control of his body as the first case of tetanus in Oregon in about 30 years.

The disease is preventable by taking a vaccine, but the child wasn’t vaccinated. Nor is he still.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report Thursday about the 2017 tetanus case as part of their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which aggregates field studies and discussions of contagious disease outbreaks throughout the U.S. and world. It comes amid a measles outbreak in Washington and Oregon that has sickened 75 people, most of them unvaccinated children. Legislatures in both states are considering bills to make it harder for parents to opt-out of required vaccinations.

The widespread use of the tetanus vaccine has led to a 95 percent decline in the number of tetanus cases since the 1940s, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Almost no one dies from the disease anymore.

But it’s still relatively easy to contract tetanus, a bacteria that lives in the soil, if not vaccinated.

According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report written by doctors at Oregon Health & Science University and a scientist from the Oregon Health Authority, the boy got a cut on his forehead while playing outside on a farm. The cut was cleaned and sutured at home.

But six days later, he started to cry, his jaw clenched tight and the muscles in his arms and upper body spasmed involuntarily. Those episodes were followed by his neck and back arching and more full-body spasms. Then he started to struggle to breathe.

His parents called for emergency medical help and the boy was transported by helicopter to a pediatric medical center. There, he was diagnosed with tetanus.

At the OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, his lockjaw prevented the boy from drinking water, which he craved. He had to have a tube placed into his windpipe and then was hooked up to a machine that helped him breathe, the report said.

The boy was given a dose of the tetanus and pertussis vaccine and a hefty dose of tetanus immune globulin. Immune globulins are one of the first-line defenses against many vaccine-preventable diseases. In the measles outbreak in Washington and Oregon, people infected with measles and pregnant women who have been exposed to the virus have been given measles immune globulins to slow or stop the virus from taking hold.

After given the tetanus-fighting drugs, the boy was placed in a darkened room with ear plugs and minimal stimulation in the pediatric intensive care unit to reduce his spasms, which seemed to be worsened by noise, light and other external stimulation.

The boy was also given an IV of metronidazole, an antibiotic that fights bacterial infections, and the cut on his forehead was again washed and cleaned, according to the report.

But he continued to get worse. Strong muscle spasms pulled his back and neck backward until they arched; his blood pressure and heart rate rose to dangerous levels; he developed a severe fever.

On his fifth day in the hospital, doctors cut a hole in his neck to insert a tube to help him breathe long-term. He kept receiving IV infusions of medication to try to dampen his pain and blood pressure. Doctors also tried to stop his muscle spasms with strategies to block his brain from sending the involuntary signals to his muscles.

After a month, the CDC said, the boy was weaned off the neuromuscular blockade and his ventilator. On the 44th day in the hospital, he could start to sip clear liquids. On the 50th day, he could walk 20 feet on his own. Four days later, the tube in his windpipe was removed.

And on the 57th day after entering the hospital, he got to leave and enter a rehabilitation center, where he regained his ability to run, bike and play within 17 days.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that the child’s diagnosis of tetanus comes from clinical observations. Tetanus bacteria are notoriously difficult to get to grow in a lab, so even though a sample of the bacteria taken from the boy didn’t grow in the lab, researchers say they’re positive the boy had tetanus.

The family’s bills for just the boy’s hospital stay came to $811,929 -- about 72 times the average cost for a child hospitalized in the U.S. That amount doesn’t include the air transportation to the hospital from the farm, his time at the rehabilitation center or any follow-up costs.

The CDC report says recent tetanus cases in adults have ranged in cost from $22,000 to more than $1 million.

Unlike measles or some other disease, getting infected with tetanus doesn’t make someone immune for life. A person could get tetanus multiple times during a lifespan if not vaccinated.

Most parents choose to fully vaccinate their children, who receive doses of DTaP, the diptheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine, at ages 2, 4 and 6 months, then again between 15 and 18 months and finally a fifth dose between 4 and 6 years old.

The immunity wears out about every 10 years, so federal health officials recommend children and adults get booster shots of the vaccine for only diptheria and tetanus every 10 years.

However, knowing all of that, the CDC noted that the parents of the child chose not to give him a second dose of the vaccine or any other recommended immunizations.