I went back a few pages and found your posting on Oct 31....I’m so sorry I missed it.

So you would be concentrating on how we couldn’t open the vial, right?  I was thinking more along the lines of a training video for EMTs.

This could have been life or death....and, yes, if it HAD been a serious injury, an IM injection might have made a crucial difference. 

Three of us tried to open it:  me, but you can count me out as it might have been because my hands were shaking;  my friend, a nurse who had opened many of these in her 15-yr career as a shock trauma nurse; the burly EMT dude managed to perhaps budge it, but not open it.

My husband, who met as at the ER, finally got it open...but by then we had given her the pills, were secured in the ER with an IV of solu-cortef if we needed it.