"The boy was given what Thai and American participants described variously as a muscle relaxant or anti-anxiety medication."

"A panic attack in a chokepoint no bigger than a manhole would almost certainly be fatal. Finally, the boy was swaddled in a flexible plastic stretcher — akin to a tortilla wrap, Hodges said — to confine his limbs and protect him from the cheese-grater walls. And then, with his teammates watching, they pulled him under the murky water. The original plan had called for two divers — one in front of the stretcher, one behind. But that configuration was scrapped as too bulky for the shoulder-width passages and elbow turns.... Instead, a diver kept the swaddled boy in a body-to-body clinch for as much of the swim as possible, the officer said, handing the boy over to a fresh diver after his designated stretch. Keeping the child warm was critical.... The worst portion of the swim was the last one, a deep tubular swoop that held the water like a sink trap. All told, it was a grueling two-hour trek through muck-filled passages. 'It is crawling through mud and underwater tunnels, and you can’t see your hands,” said Erik Brown, a Canadian diver who was among the 18'..."

I'm reading the very detailed, well-written WaPo article "‘Time is running out’: Inside the treacherous rescue of boys trapped in a Thai cave."

I wanted to quote that particular part because it shows the ludicrous wrongness of the BBC graphic I called "excellent":