Rochester MN and the Mayo - Rochester is the Mayo!

We certainly enjoyed our 18 day stay in Wisconsin but the main reason we spent so much time in Iowa and Wisconsin is that we had scheduled our annual checkups at the Mayo Hospital in Rochester Minnesota. Most of the campgrounds around Rochester MN are pricey so we opted to stay at a local park just outside the town of Zumbro Falls, MN.

After scouring the internet for an interesting place to stay I came across one called the Sportsman Park Campground. This park has 50 amp and water, no sewer and no dump station, but was right on the Zumbro River. With the heat predicted for the area to be in the 90’s we certainly wanted 50 amp service to run our A/C’s and being next to a river is a bonus. All this for $20 per night with the only downside being we would have to drive 20 miles to Rochester for our appointments at the Mayo.

We won’t bore you with details about all of our appointments but between the two of us we had appointments in Rochester for four straight days. Sharon is a breast cancer survivor and I had a melanoma before so we don’t really look forward to these appointments but know that they are necessary and are vital to our well being.

After four days of appointments we were certainly tired of all the prodding and poking as well as all the mental anguish but we must say that the Mayo Clinics really are wonderful places to have medical concerns taken care of. The quality of care, friendliness of staff and punctuality of appointments are unheard of at any other hospital or clinic we have ever been to.

Since we didn’t spend every moment of every day seeing doctors we took the guided tour of the Mayo one day and I also did the self-guided tour of the art inside the Mayo while Sharon was at an appointment. We highly recommend when in Rochester Minnesota to take the time to take the tours as they are well worth the effort. We also strolled around downtown Rochester only to learn that Rochester is the Mayo!

What began as the Mayo Clinic goes way back to the practice of a frontier doctor, William W. Mayo, who was an Englishman that settled in Rochester MN in 1863. In 1883 a tornado ravaged Rochester and Mother Alfred Moes, the founder of the Sisters of St. Francis, proposed to build and staff a hospital in Rochester only if Dr. W.W. Mayo would provide the medical care. He accepted and his two sons joined him in the 1880’s and they founded the first Mayo in 1889. Shortly thereafter more physicians (of like mindedness regarding patient care) were asked to join.

Their passion for medicine and their attention to patient care become known worldwide as visiting physicians would come to learn from them. What these three doctors started eventually gave rise to the renowned medical facilities that make up the Mayo today. We have now visited and been treated at all three of their major clinics, the one in Jacksonville Florida, Scottsdale Arizona and now the one in Rochester Minnesota.

There have been a lot of medical innovation at the Mayo’s. Cortisone was first identified by American chemists Edward C. Kendall and Harold L. Mason while doing research at the Mayo Clinic. For their efforts the Nobel Prize in 1950 was given to Mayo doctor  Edward C. Kendall  "for their discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects."

At the end of all our appointments we walked over to the Ground Rounds Brew Pub and cheered the end of our appointments. We plan to leave the next day heading an hour NW to stay at the fairgrounds just outside of Minneapolis/St Paul MN. We need to stay close to Rochester in case any of our results require further appointments. We are certainly hoping that isn’t the case…