Stuff I didn't know yesterday

There is a certain colorless crystalline alkaloid that is one of the bitterest substances known to man.  It is so bitter that it's taste is detectable in doses as small as one part per million (1PPM).

This crystalline alkaloid is also quite deadly, having a lethal dosage of just 1 mg/kg.  As if that weren't scary enough, you don't have to eat it to die.  It can be inhaled or even absorbed through the skin!

As quickly as 20-30 minutes after exposure to this substance the muscles in the head and neck begin to convulse and the victim starts to become hypersensitive to external stimuli (sound, touch and noise)... any one of which will trigger a new round of seizures.  The convulsions start out relatively mildly, but quickly progress in intensity and frequency as they spread to the rest of the body... especially the spine.

The process by which this substance takes control of, and ultimately kills the victim can best be illustrated by thinking about an electrical circuit.  A circuit can be either open or closed.  Our body functions through unimaginably complex electrical impulses sent to the muscles by the brain via the central nervous system.  Nerve synapses are constantly being issued with momentary instructions to either close or open... which causes the related muscles to either contract or relax.  As this poisonous substance is absorbed by vulnerable receptors in the brain and spinal chord, increasingly frequent signals are sent to all of the synapses to close, causing powerful full body contractions... otherwise known as convulsions/seizures.

As the frequency and intensity of the convulsions/seizures increase, the body becomes increasingly fatigued.  One of the larger muscle groups in the body - those associated with the diaphragm - are particularly sensitive to these signals to contract.  Picture involuntarily exhaling all the air in your lungs at the same time that all of your body's muscles tense up in unison.  Now as the seconds tic by and you can't get a new lungful of air, the world starts to turn sparkly and gray as unconsciousness threatens.  Each subsequent convulsion is worse than the last and brings both physical exhaustion and suffocation close enough to touch.  It is as if you are experiencing the worst possible labor pains... but with no hint of joyous relief.

If you've figured out that what I've been describing are the attributes and effects of Strychnine, give yourself a gold star!  You know way more than I did at this time yesterday.

The reason I didn't know any of this yesterday is that I am not a big fan of crime/detective stories (other than Sherlock Holmes*), and Strychnine has been so carefully controlled as a pesticide that few people can legally obtain/use it.

However, late yesterday evening my wife asked me to take a look at our beloved Black Lab mix Jordan.  Zahava said that she'd heard Jordan fall down and she was now acting very strangely.  When I went to have a look, Jordan was having trouble standing and was shivering rhythmically. 

I tried to coax her into having a drink from her water dish... and she really seemed to want to... but she was having trouble bending her neck down far enough for her tongue to reach the water.

For almost 30 minutes we all fussed over Jordan in the well lit kitchen, petting her and speaking to her in reassuring tones.  I now realize with horror that each touch... each sound... and even the blinding lights were triggering ever more powerful muscle convulsions.

Remember... yesterday I wasn't the fountain of knowledge you see before you now.

Finally, after even more time had passed a very dim bulb began to flicker in my head.  I realized that she had no sign of physical injury or bite.  I realized (with Zahava's help) that Jordan was getting worse, not better.  I realized that she most likely had been poisoned.

After a few frantic phone calls we found a veterinary clinic in Jerusalem that had a 24 hour on-call number.  I phoned and described Jordan's symptoms.  After a few pointed questions ("When did the symptoms start?"... "Do I know what she might have eaten?"... "Is anyone else in the house experiencing similar symptoms?") the vet told me to put her in the car and get to the clinic as fast as I could.  Within moments our two tearful big kids watched as a more tearful Zahava helped me load a twitching/seizing Jordan into the back seat of the car. 

Throughout the endless 15 minutes it took me to get to the clinic, I listened helplessly to Jordan grunting and thrashing on the seat behind me.  When I arrived at the clinic she couldn't walk and was having trouble breathing.

The vet looked her over for less than a minute and told me she was most likely suffering from Strychnine poisoning.  He explained that the only way to fight the nerve synapses convulsive closing was to force them open using heavy and constant doses of anesthetic.

As he set up the I.V. drip and began pushing first Valium and then Nembutal into her vein I watched as Jordan relaxed and drew a normal breath for the first time in over an hour.  She still twitched from time to time, but she seemed to be getting relief.  When I pointed this out, the vet warned me not to take this momentary relaxation as too positive a sign.  He described how the next 6 - 8 hours (at least) would be a very serious tug-of-war between the Strychnine's attempts to cause convulsions and the anesthetic's ability to relieve them.

Every 20-30 minutes the effects of the anesthetic began to wane and the effects of the Strychnine became more pronounced.  First the trembling and twitching would begin... and then her body would start to involuntarily arch and stretch.  Each time this happened the vet gave her a little more narcotic and the tremors would subside.  He explained that this was a dangerous game to play because too little anesthetic would allow the Strychnine to cause death by asphyxiation or exhaustion... but too much anesthetic would cause death by overdose.

The entire clinic was not even as big as my bedroom.  The vet and his two attendants worked on Jordan and several other late-night casualties simultaneously. In between the tidal flow of seizures crashing on Jordan's convulsing shore, I watched the vet sew a cat's mostly severed ear back on, euthanize an ancient Poodle while its head lay in its sobbing Russian owner's lap and remove a Golden Retriever's horribly bloated/infected uterus... all the while talking non-stop to all the owners.

Before sending me home, the vet told me that he was optimistic about Jordan's chances... but said that there were far to many unknowns and variables to make any guarantees.  He said that he had seen dogs come in to the clinic in worse shape survive... and others who had seemed in much better shape succumb.  What he promised was that he would watch her all night as if she was his own, and continue the tug of war with the poison for as long as possible.

At 6:30 this morning I spoke with the vet again and he told me that Jordan had made it through the night and that he was no longer giving her anesthetic.  He said she still had mild tremors, but that he was relatively sure that the fluids were starting to wash the poison out of her system and that Jordan would pull through.  The way he put it was, "Go ahead and buy the champagne, but don't open it just yet."

Another conversation at noon was even more encouraging.  He said that the lingering anesthetic in her body would keep her sleeping for at least another day, but that the combination of the I.V. drip and a diuretic would continue to flush out Jordan's system.  He reassured me that he felt she was now completely out of the woods.

We still don't know who put Strychnine out in our neighborhood.  I am horrified to think that Yonah could just as easily have come in contact with the poison as Jordan.  in fact, fatherly pride aside, at this age Jordan probably has considerably more common sense than Yonah when it comes to ingesting unknown substances.

While we have reported this to the local authorities and hope they get to the bottom of how this deadly poison came to be so close to where we live... a part of me hopes that I never find out the guilty party's identity.  Right now I don't know if I can be trusted not to give the culprit a taste of his own medicine, so to speak.  Obviously these kinds of thoughts are neither rational nor helpful, so instead of eating lunch today I decided to provide you all with this educational public service announcement.

After all... I didn't know any of this stuff yesterday.  Maybe you didn't either.

* Yes, I am aware that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle makes reference to a 'strychnine-like substance' in 'The Sign of Four'.  However, he doesn't describe the early onset of symptoms so I never made the connection.