My habit of walking around with a gaping yap gets me in no end of trouble.

A case in point; the other day I was in a rush to draw up some intubation drugs before the arrival of a woman in cardiac arrest.
In my haste to mix up the various potions, I accidentally squirted around 5 mls of Vecuronium into my mouth.
Vecuronium is a non-depolarizing neuromuscular blocking agent used to paralyze patients prior to intubation.
I had no idea if Vecuronium would be absorbed through my oral mucosa, but if it did, things were about to get embarrassingly interesting.

During the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors began to return to the New World from their, um, conquistadoring…. with tales of mysterious ‘flying death’ arrows.
In 1594, whilst visiting Venezuela, one of Sir Walter Raleigh’s lieutenants overheard the local Indians discussing the poison they used to tip these arrows, which they named: uiraery from uria, meaning bird and eor to kill.
As word of this new poison spread, Europeans came to know it as wourali or curare.

Much later, the poison was identified as originating from plants of two families—Menispermaceae, and Loganiaceae, which includes the genus Strychnos (yup, as in Strychnine).

Scientific experimentation soon found that curare could knock the hop out of a frog by blocking the transmission of impulses across the muscle-nerve junction in its legs.
Scientists next demonstrated that larger animals such as donkeys could be kept alive by the means of ventilating their lungs with ‘bellows’ until the effects of the drug wore off.
It wasn’t long before doctors were experimenting all aver the place with the use of curare derivatives to keep patients still during electro-shock therapy and stop them jiggling around all over the operating table during surgical procedures.

Today, drugs such a Vecuronium are used in combination with analgesics and sedatives to provide anesthetists with plush houses, expensive cars and large offices.
Did you know why anesthetists sit down to manage their patients during operations?
It’s because they haven’t figured out how to do it lying down. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

Anyway, a mouthful of flying death and I thought I had better tell the doctor what I had done….. just in case I was about to loose my hop and crash to the floor completely awake but unable to move a muscle.
I have heard stories of medical students who as a laugh, inject themselves with a paralyzing agent and then see who can run the furthest down a corridor before collapsing into a gelatinous heap.
Some laugh. I presume their colleagues then ventilate them until spontaneous respirations return.
This all sounds like medical urban myth to me, but a nurse accidentally paralyzing himself whilst on duty? Now that I could believe.

In the end, it was all a little disappointing. Not so much as a flaccid pinky.
I did however manage to spray the contents of a nasogastric tube over the face of the doctor, which it turns out, results in a much higher probability of loss of bodily function.

[ Probe a little deeper: Neuromuscular blocking drugs: discovery and development
::Thandla Raghavendra, MB FRCA::]