Tag Archives: anesthesia

Announcement ! We’re On A Mission

Posted on by

2014-09-14Announcement1490 copy

Or more accurately we were on a mission. That’s why there have been a dearth of posts lately here at BigShotsNow-The Blog. Saving lives and getting huge ATTABOY’s are what we live for. We’re back now. The patient lived and is properly grateful. Some of you know, at least the ones we’ve rescued from certain disaster before, that *The Institute has a search and rescue facility on site. We get distress calls from individuals all around the globe who have gotten themselves into some sort of medical emergency and needed our immediate response. Consequently we have semi-trained technicians, although they are not always medically trained, that can provide life saving procedures if necessary. Usually they just stand around leaning up against the mess hall wall, looking for someone bleeding or dragging around a severed limb so they can jump on them and save ’em. There have even been unsubstantiated reports of an unsuspecting new-to-be patient getting struck in the brain pan area with a brick or small length of two by four to induce what they call “patient-dom” so they have something to do. Otherwise they serve no useful purpose until a call come in.

But when a call does come in, jump back, because then they go gonzo nuts grabbing their med kits, getting a fix on where the calamity is, piling into the our private medical dirigible,”The Mother Theresa”, and springing into action when necessary. There is no accident or mayhem or chaos that is too far away, or too huge for our team to handle. Their motto is “Yeah, Well, How bad can it be?”

Lets just say you’re in the tall grass just outside of Mburu Buro slightly north and west of JoBerg and you get bit by a Black Mamba, (also called the ex-wife snake) one of the fastest meanest snakes in the world. They’re so mean that if there is no one else is around to bite they’ll bite themselves. You call us, we fire up the dirigible and we’re on the way. Unfortunately in that case you’re SOL because Black Mamba bites are deadly in a about two and a half minutes. Sorry. But thanks for calling us any way.

In each of our med kits we have life-saving equipment, such as big gauzy pads to hide all the blood, point and shoot cameras for selfies and to document our procedures and maybe some scenery shots if we go someplace cool, little skinny bandages that are good for holding someone’s eyelids open when you don’t want them to go to sleep. Lots of different sized baggies for placing over stumps and the rolls of duck tape to hold them in place. Specially grown sticks off of the Hawthorne grove down in the valley to bite on in case we have to remove a limb or larger portions of torso. A small hammer wrapped in a resilient foam-like material to gently tap the patient out with. We cannot, due to a screw up with the licensing procedures, carry any anesthesia or pain medication so we found that a short-term, manually induced coma works just as well, and is more profitable for us. Anesthesia is expensive, just saying.

Recently a very good friend had a procedure done in a normal medical facility run by a For Profit corporation ( first mistake ) that sent her into a total tailspin causing a crash that nearly gave her severe whiplash along with the loss of her spine and resulted in her calling on The Institute to come to her aid. Which we did. Luckily for her we were able to call our team back from that Black Mamba incident and get to her location in time to assist her. It took a few days to get things completely under control, but we did, and now she is happy, not to mention pert and sassy, and in nearly perfect health.  Plus she looks marvelous. She’ll have a few scars but they’re tasteful ones and unless you know her well will never see them anyway. She has a new opinion of The Institute and its Director, which is favorable. Lets hope all that feeling of good will remains after we bill her.

So there you have it. That’s why we’ve been out of touch but there’s plenty of old stuff to read until we get back so don’t go away mad. Remember if you get into trouble “Who You Gonna Call?: The Institute that’s who. We’re standing by.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

Flying with The Sandhills

Posted on by

FlyingSandhill7664

Wildlife photography is the heart and soul of our image collection division here at the Institute and we go to great, no, fantastic lengths, to bring you the incredible photos you regularly see here on the blog. Not only do we travel to the very ends of the earth to secure these images but we take incredibly dangerous risks to do so.

Here is a case in point. This Sandhill Crane was captured as it flew in a counter-clockwise direction to the spinning of the earth, by a new device which is highly secret and held closely under wraps as our patent protection has not come through yet, but I can tell you a limited amount of information regarding its development because I trust you and know that you won’t rat us out to our competition. You won’t rat us out to our competition, will you? This could cost us big bucks if you did, so I know you’ll be tight-lipped about what I’m going to tell you now. (See, this is one of the great things about being a regular reader of our blog, you get the inside scoop on all the newest innovations that happen here at the Institute. Not to mention that you feel like a real insider and know secret cool stuff your neighbors don’t.)

The problem was, how do you get up there, where the cranes regularly fly, and move with them so that you can take their picture. That was the tough part. I turned this problem over to our R&D people with the instructions to solve this or look for new jobs, and it wasn’t long before they found the perfect solution. This gets a little technical at this point so bear with me as I try and explain it as clearly as I can.

Their first obstacle to overcome was how to propel a handsome but good-looking, svelte,  6′ tall, 228lb. photographer up to an altitude of nearly 11,000′ and maintain a forward speed of 17 or 18mph to match the flying speed of a Sandhill crane. Well we had a solution for that, which we’ll come to a little later but then the next problem was how do you attach said photographer to the device yet still allow him to have ample freedom to move about and take pictures. These were tough things to overcome.

Then we had one of those “Eureka !” moments that used to occur regularly in the Little Lulu comics everyone read as a kid and we had the basic problems solved. The next step was just to assemble the pieces and test it out.

The ascension problem was fairly easy. We found a Canadian company that we feel builds the best Drones in the world and selected one of their eight armed models with the optional gimbal arm, that we re-named, the eight armed model, and with a little Yankee knowhow refit their usually adequate but under-powered power supply with a brand new out-of-the crate 454 Chevy large block engine with an acro-static transmission and we had a device we felt could safely lift a 228lb. handsome and devil-may-care photographer into the air.

The other problem, that of connecting the photographer to the device, was a little trickier to solve. The problems to overcome were how to fasten the guy (me ) to the rig and still let him have the flexibility to move in a 360° arc with his arms free to take pictures or wave frantically if something went wrong. After many unsuccessful trial and error attempts were made we were stumped. Finally one of our super smart space-engineers came up with a workable solution.

As he was riding his bike to work one morning he found one of those amusement games in the trash behind a Chucky Cheese called “The Claw”. This was the one where you put a quarter in and maneuvered the claw over a bin filled with neat stuff you had to have, to try and pick up a toy, like a teddy bear, or a cigarette lighter with a scantily clad woman’s picture on it, or a holster for the Glock nine. You could never get the holster up high enough before it would fall out of the claw and you had to put another quarter in to keep trying. That was the hook of the game see, to get you to drop the whole welfare check on getting that holster. Seeing the solution to our problem he tied a rope around the machine and drug it up the hill behind his bike to the Institute where we could use the forklift to move it into the lab. Unfortunately we had to proceed with the engineering with our engineer by Skype from the hospital he was in while he underwent hernia surgery. We got most of his ideas down before he went under the anesthesia.

The claw was refashioned so that its four arms were slightly larger and then fitted to the optional gimbal arm under the eight armed model so that it would dangle down and using its four claw arms, fasten on to a specially chosen bike helmet, kind of like ice tongs, to one of the really dumb looking ones with the long tail like thing at the back which we thought would act as a rudder. We also decided on another safety measure and replaced the plastic strap that goes under the chin with a new carbon fiber one that they use to pick the space shuttle up with when they want to move it around and don’t want to gas up the gantry. You can’t play it too safe when a picture is at stake. So I think you have the picture now. Big Block Chevy 454 attached to the top of the eight armed model drone with the optional gimbal arm with the retro-fitted claw holding onto the goofy looking long-tailed bike helmet containing the photographer. That it. Simple,right.

That completed the development of the rig and after several test flights using interns we determined that some modifications should be made. One was to put a muffler on the 454 as it made a hell of racket and the noise would nearly paralyze the birds in flight. After some nasty run-ins with the wildlife folks we did throttle it down some and put new factory issue glass packs on the motor making it nearly silent. The other was since we couldn’t separate the quarter taking mechanism from the claw we had to leave it connected and take up several rolls of quarters to keep it functioning during the flight. The last correction was to add several layers of Dr. Scholl’s gel liners to the fliers shoes as this whole thing came down fast when it ran out of gas.

That was it. It was finished. The next step was to go where the birds were and set up and take pictures. Early in the morning as the birds were readying themselves for take off, the eleven of us would head out to the flyway with the eight armed model and the flier would complete his fight check, making sure he had the helmet strap double buckled, and had at least four rolls of quarters easily reachable in his pockets, the gel strips in his shoes which were laced up tight and tied with a double knot and he was ready. The ten others would then lift the drone about waist height which was their limit, making sure to keep it level while the flier crawled under and using one of his of many quarters got the claw hooked to his helmet, the engine was started and with a quiet roar the photographer was off into the heavens to accompany the Sandhill Cranes on their morning flights. That’s all there was to it.

The results as you can see were simply dramatic. We were able to float along with the birds as they flew and take glorious photos of them before they would usually go berserk from the noise, fumes and intrusion and attack us causing many near fatal mishaps. But look at the pictures. All in all I’m calling this success. Remember you’re still under what they call in the business a “News Embargo” so you can’t spill a word about this. Not a peep. Unless you want to tell your Aunt Pheeb, or your Nana, or even the guy the delivers your mail, wait, no not him, he’s a fed, it would be ok. Just don’t be talking to any of the news outlets that pay you for interesting stories. Got to run, there’s someone from the FAA at the gate wanting to talk to us. I sure hope none of you squealed.