Mayo

This coming Sunday, the 26^th, I’ll be once more heading up to Rochester, MN  (a 7 hour drive from Chicago) for my six-month checkup at the Mayo Clinic, returning Tuesday. Regardless of the fact that I have had absolutely no problems (Please, God!)—other than the residual effects of having been bombarded by 35 radiation treatments to the base of my tongue—since I was released in September of 2004, I still feel mild trepidation each time I have to return. It’s not unlike anticipating a check-up at the dentist. The anticipation is always worse than the actuality.

The first couple of years after my release, I had quarterly checkups; now I go semi-annually and, after five years have passed, will go only once a year. The time devoted to tests and appointments and tests has been reduced from two days each visit to one, so I hope to be back home Tuesday, the 27th.

But I owe Mayo my life. Literally. I stand in awe and total admiration of everything about it and everyone who works there. The terms “state of the art” and “efficiency” were, I’m sure, coined for the Mayo Clinic’s approach to medicine. Its physical facilities are spread over several city blocks (most of which are connected by underground passageways), and include at least two hospitals, and that it is one of the world’s premiere medical facilities is evident the minute you arrive.

The hub of the complex is the side by side and linked Mayo and Gonda buildings, in the vast foyer on the lower level of which, a pianist plays as a United Nations of patients passes by: Hassidic Jews, black-swathed Islamic women, Africans in brightly colored robes, turbaned Indians; every race and nationality are represented.

Handling the thousands of people who swarm through the complex each day wouldn’t be possible were it not for the incredible sense of efficiency that permeates the place. All departments of the vast facility are connected by computer. Blood is drawn in one place for every department of the center, as are x-rays. You can walk from having an x-ray taken to an appointment several buildings away and by the time you get there, the doctor can pull the results up from his computer.

Entering Mayo is not unlike stepping forward several years in time. It has access to the very latest in technology, and has not one but (last I knew), two $1.5 million-dollar P.E.T. scan machines which take 3-D images of the entire body, head to toe, and spots cancerous cells anywhere they may be.

For those patients with limited financial means but who require long stays, free housing may ve available. In addition to a Ronald McDonald House, which provides free housing for ill children and their families, those undergoing transplants and those going through extended cancer treatment are housed without a penny of charge. (I stayed at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge for most of my 7 week treatment program. If you are ever looking for worthy charities, look no further than those organizations which fund these facilities and others.) Free shuttle busses transport patients from area hotels and motels to the main complex on an every-half-hour schedule.

You might expect such a huge, complex facility, and the people who work there, to be coldly impersonal, but that is not at all the case. While everyone there is a professional—and Mayo draws from the finest medical people in the world—I was never treated with anything less than courtesy. (Interestingly, I note that perhaps the bulk of doctors in the Oncology department are either from India or Pakistan.)

Having so said, however, I never cease to be dumbfounded by, upon entering or leaving one of the buildings of one of the best cancer-treatment centers in the world, seeing medical personnel standing outside…smoking! I truly, truly want to run over, slap the cigarette out of their mouths, grab them firmly by the shoulders, and scream “Look at me!  Look at me! Closely! This is what your *@%#()* smoking does to people who do not smoke. This is what it can do to your children!  If you want to kill yourself, use a gun and spare the rest of us!!”

Well, we’ll save a diatribe on smoking for another day. This was intended to be in praise of the Mayo Clinic and my eternal gratitude to it. I hope I have conveyed a very small part of it.

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This blog is from Dorien's collection of blogs written after his book, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com, was published. That book is also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. I am looking at the possibility of publishing a second volume of blogs. The blogs now being posted are from that tentative collection. You can find information about all of Dorien's books at his web site: www.doriengrey.com.