Helping Offset Medicare Cuts

With Medicare cuts looming, practice costs rising, nursing pay cuts looming, and medical malpractice premiums out of control, emergency department personnel have to become resourceful in order to feed their families. You, my dedicated readers, are now going to learn of a secret way to recycle commonly-used items in the emergency department so that you will have the ability to put food on your tables.

Creating a Makeshift Blowgun

After inserting a chest tube in a patient (or assisting in the chest tube insertion), keep the chest tube container. Use a pair of trauma shears to cut off the end of the container, creating a long hollow tube.

Making the blowgun is only half of the battle, though. Without ammunition, it would be difficult to use the blowgun to catch food. Making the ammunition is also fairly easy.

To create the blowgun darts, you’ll need a needle, a piece of scrap paper, and some tape.

Fold the piece of paper in half and then curl it into a cone. Make sure the cone comes to a sharp tip.

Tape the tip of the paper cone in place so that it will not unravel.

Put the tip on the cone inside your blowgun and cut the cone at the edge so that it just fits inside the end of the blowgun. Do not make the fit too snug or the dart will not fire.

Take the cone out. Remove a needle from its sheath and carefully insert it into the cone so that the pointed end of the needle sticks out the end of the cone.

Use the needle cap to push the end of the needle firmly into the cone. Your dart is now complete.

Put the cap over the needle for safety until you find some wild game that you are ready to shoot. You can also use the capped dart for practice on such things as pillows.

 

Uncapped darts fly quite far and can be dangerous. NEVER shoot darts or any other projectiles indoors or at any person — EVER! Doing so could be very dangerous!

I was recently able to use this makeshift weapon to capture a small burro which I used to feed my wife and children for several months while waiting for Medicare payments and insurance approvals to come through.

Use this makeshift blowgun to help your family and co-workers stave off starvation when Medicare and other insurance cuts come to your town.

At a later date, if funding cuts continue, I may post my design for a self-actuating tranquilizer dart to take down larger game such as gazelle and deer using surgical tubing, a 60 cc syringe, rubber bands, a 14 gauge needle and some ground up Xanax.

Oh, by the way - does anyone have a way to cook meat with a used electrocautery device?