The Mayo Adventure, part 1

As promised, I wrote about my trip to the Mayo Clinic at the beginning of September. It's a looong post, so it's getting broken up into several parts. 

The Trip to Rochester

Our Mayo Clinic adventure started out auspiciously. The trip from my apartment to Rochester, MN is, theoretically, a little over three hours. My mom set out early from Chicago to pick me up and we continued the journey, through Wisconsin countryside that always surprises me in its beauty. We crossed over the mighty Mississippi river and drove past the town where my father grew up, and it was a serene, interesting drive. Even stopping for lunch halfway through we made it to Rochester in good time, tired after the drive (her more than me, since she did all the driving!) but in good spirits. We navigated through Rochester with relative ease, until we came to a quaint house in a quiet subdivision---our castle for the next week.

The House

The house was one we rented through AirBnB, and it was gorgeous. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer place to come back to, and as our stay drew on, we became ever more grateful for the peaceful space to decompress. One of the co-owners met us as we drove up to his property. An overwhelmingly polite Midwestern man, he told us that he had been a pilot for most of his life, doing emergency flights to and from the Mayo Clinic. After one too many winters flying to Fargo in the middle of the night during a blizzard, he decided he’d had enough of the airborne life, and took a job at Mayo in their aerospace division, where he helped facilitate health screenings and care for pilots. He told us that his partner and co-owner was a pilot as well, laughing slightly as he did so, presumably at the improbability of two pilots settling down in a quiet town in Minnesota and opening a(n Air)BnB together. He gave us a thorough tour of the house, which offered more than enough space for the two of us. The kitchen was well-equipped for basic (and not-so-basic) cooking, the unit came with a fancy “smart” washer and dryer, and the ground floor bedroom had, across from it, a small room with a TV and a recliner. He told us that many people who stayed with him were in town for the same reason we were, and many of them were older, often with mobility issues, and the recliner provided an option for those who couldn’t sleep supine. For me, the room was a perfect “insomnia room”---insomniacs are often advised not to spend any more time than necessary in their bedroom. If they’re not sleeping, they should be elsewhere, so that the only association with their bedroom was sleep. The room across the hall presented itself as an ideal haven for my sleepless nights, though I was hoping (optimistically as it turned out) that I wouldn’t have much trouble in that regard.

The house had a cozy living room, with a Smart TV that offered more features than I really felt was necessary in a TV, but that I naturally explored right away. The living room was stocked with basic board games and a variety of delightfully nerdy BlueRay discs, including the entire series of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Indiana Jones, earning the owners my instant approval. The house was decorated beautifully, complimenting earthy tones with splashes of color, and giving many of the rooms individual themes---aviation, for my bedroom, Parisian art for my mother’s, and for the insomnia room, retro-style comic book art, done by a friend of the owners. They even provided a welcome gift bag for us, full of instant oatmeal, fruit snacks, crackers, and water bottles, all of which proved highly useful during the long days at Mayo. We settled in, and made a grocery run, driving by the clinic so we would know exactly where it was we were going the next day, for our 7:30am appointment. Tired, we went to sleep early, but neither of us slept well---in what would turn out to be the theme of the week.

The Clinic

The Mayo Clinic itself is an immense facility, spread over several buildings, the largest of which is 21 stories tall with rounded sides extending up its 93 meters. It towers over an idyllic courtyard, across from which is an open air mall/restaurant strip that leads into the University of Minnesota-Rochester shopping area. The two major buildings, Gonda and Mayo, are connected to one another in an awkward fusion that facilitates moving between different departments in different buildings, but has the effect of making it look from the outside like the taller, sleeker Gonda is eating the shorter, squarer Mayo.

The inside of the Gonda and Mayo buildings, where we spent all of our time, was clearly designed with serenity and tranquility in mind. The main level has a long, marble and glass passageway, populated by the coffee and gift shop, the cafeteria, rows of comfortable couches and end tables, and a grand piano that was nearly always in use, occasionally with choral accompaniment. Each wing of the Gonda/Mayo amalgamation was home to one or two individual departments. We spent most of our time traveling between GI (Mayo 12), Neurology (Mayo 8) and the Sleep Clinic (Gonda 17), which meant we learned the layout of the buildings pretty quickly. The departments were equipped with large, often quite full, waiting areas, and we soon learned why. As it turns out it was not at all unusual for patients to spend six hours a day in the waiting room of a particular department, their names on a list to get an appointment should another patient not show up for theirs. We had our own share of waiting, but more on that later. The waiting rooms in the Gonda building were more impressive than those in Mayo. The huge glass walls presented a stunning panoramic view of Rochester and the hills and valleys in the distance. The room itself was full of plush couches, convenient end tables, walls full of pamphlets for patients to read (How To Cope with Chronic Pain; Caring for a Loved One with Chronic Illness; Tips for Managing Stress…and so on) and a row of computers where patients could log onto their Mayo Clinic patient profile to check their appointment schedules and message their doctors. The Sleep Clinic was equipped with a number of jigsaw puzzles, several half-complemented, and magazines in towering stacks, well-loved by the hundreds of patients who came through the Sleep Clinic each month.  We got to know the Sleep Clinic well, and the view from the 17^th floor of the Gonda building, looking out over the city and to the wilds beyond, was one of the highlights of the trip.

Thoughts From Places #1

Today Raven and I went to the beach. We frolicked in the waves and soaked up the sun (in my case a bit too literally). Originally we were going to kayak on the beautiful, serene lake that we are fortunate enough to live near… but the beautiful, serene lake was less serene and more possessed by angry wind demons today. Less boating, but awesome waves at the beach. Raven and I braved cold water and colder wind to throw ourselves at the cresting water with the abandon of the silliest of children. Fitting because we were the only ones in the water over the age of 16.

As we threw ourselves at the waves we watched kite-surfers throw themselves into the sky with equal abandon. I felt alive and aware and completely in the moment, something I yearn towards feeling at all times. It strikes me that feeling alive is usually correlated fairly strongly with meeting and facing things that could kill you. Skydiving, climbing Mt. Everest, braving Death Valley, running with the bulls, singing karaoke. Okay, that last one probably won’t kill you, but I remain unconvinced. We derive joy and excitement from facing our deaths. Facing something that is larger or more powerful than ourselves.

I grew up on the Atlantic Ocean and spent most summers diving into the freezing northern Atlantic waters – lips blue, arms numb, ice running through my veins. It remains one of my fondest memories of childhood and stands out clearly in my memory. It also remains one of my earliest memories of terror (aside from the standard monster under the bed variety). The ocean to me as a child (and even today) is a vast unknowable thing. It may not be infinite, but neither can I see nor imagine its whole and so is the closest thing on this earth to infinite that I have experienced.  And it is one of my most indelible memories. Etched into my memory by fear and awe.

As I threw myself at a far smaller body of water this afternoon I felt a similar feeling of awe (though admittedly less fear), but my sense of awe came not from living close to death and instead came more from a feeling of oneness. I couldn’t see the bottom where my feet were buried in sand, but I could close my eyes and feel the movement of the water, the pull of the sand, the chill of the wind and I was a part of it. I felt connected and infinite. Both incredibly large and infinitesimally small.

Perhaps we don’t pull the marrow of our lives from living on the brink of death, but from throwing us into the infinite and (for a time) allowing it to absorb a part of our being.