Editorís note: The following is a first-person account by Jason Gray, NFH writer, of his experiences (some humorous) at the Mayo Clinic.’ìI think at this point we need to get you into Mayo Clinic.î A Mayo Clinic referral has a semi-mythical quality for those dealing with rare or hard-to-diagnose health problems, built up through decades of popular culture references to the place and a fair amount of marketing expertise. My own Mayo Clinic experience proved that while it’s not a magical guarantee of an answer to your health issue, much of the popular reputation is deserved.The Mayo Clinic campus in Rochester, Minn., is an enormous place that takes up the bulk of downtown Rochester. The Mayo Clinic process is built around getting a huge number of visiting patients through each of their huge number of tests and consults. Your patient number and your records binder become your lifeline. Your waiting area pager becomes like a trusted friend. You quickly learn the Mayo jargon language of being a ìchecker,î the patient smart-phone app and the subway and skyway system. The shared experience of suddenly immersing in a new environment, of dealing with odd illnesses that specialists ìback homeî couldn’t figure out and frequently seeing the same people each day on shuttles to the hotels creates an esprit de corps among your fellow patients.The hotels and businesses throughout Rochester cater to visiting Mayo patients. The medical industry isn’t the sole economy, so interesting interactions between patients and non-patient visitors can happen. A traveling middle school wrestling team invaded our previously quiet, patient-friendly hotel one weekend. After suffering through an afternoon of kids playing in the halls and a morning’s free breakfast worth of coaches holding up the waffle maker line, the older patients decided to launch a counter-attack. A self-titled ìResistance Committeeî met on the shuttle to talk about how to use catheters and ace bandages to create trip wires across the hallways. Crushing a large amount of Colace into the hot chocolate machine was another popular idea.Shopping and restaurants near the clinic also focus on patients in ways that create odd changes to otherwise standard mall experiences. The large Barnes and Noble bookstore in the adjoining shopping center is probably the only one in the world with a health, medicine and self-help section that’s much larger than the Young Adult Vampire Novel section. Downtown Rochester is also likely the only place one would see a store entirely dedicated to sleep apnea, completely crowded with people marveling at the latest in CPAP technology. Every restaurant is exceedingly careful about dietary concerns. My vegetarian wife commented that ìthere’s more veggie and vegan options here than any place east of West Hollywood.îThe Mayo architects and staff have their own particular sense of humor. Whoever is in charge of the music in the waiting rooms and lobby areas seems to want to see how much they can mess with people in their Muzak selection. In addition to the obvious standby ìA Summer Place,î patients are treated to such laughter-inducing classics as ìDream the Impossible Dream,î ìMagical Mr. Mistoffeleesî and ìThe Girl from Ipanema.îThe dozen or so buildings on campus, as well as many local hotels, are connected to every other building by several different ways via the ìSkyway and Subwayî walkway system. These paths are lined with gift shops, museums, pharmacies and fast food. Volunteers are posted throughout the system in their ìMayo Blueî vests and their self-described brand of ìMinnesota Niceî to help with directions. They’re seemingly trained to listen for patients and their caregivers saying such things as, ìHow many Dairy Queens does this place have, anyway? Oh, wait, I think that’s the same DQ again.îEven with all the quirks and oddities involved in creating a destination medical city-within-a-city, Mayo Clinic manages to help more than 350,000 patients per year at their Rochester campus. Their scheduling system, with its smart-phone apps, pagers and dozen-page appointment lists, can allow you to see many more specialists and have many more tests performed in a much shorter amount of time than you could anywhere else. And the flights, hotels and meals while you’re there make for a monstrous tax deduction.
