1.07.2008

doctor, doctor

The town of Rochester, Minnesota, is the finest medical theme park in the nation—and very possibly the world (I haven't been to Bangkok so I'm not poz). The anchor store here in Rochester is the Mayo Clinic. When I interviewed King Hussein and Queen Noor in the late '90s, they had just taken over a whole wing of the place for the king's treatment for, if I recollect correctly, Hodgkin's lymphoma. (It was his last interview, alas, and they knew it when I met with them.) In any case, people come to the middle of God's Nowhere for treatments of all kinds from all over the world, partly because of self referral and partly because of the quality of care—and partly because of the theme park aspects.
The various hospitals, treatment centers, outpatient facilities, nursing homes, rehab centers and pharmacies are all interconnected by a labyrinth of underground tunnels and a skyway on the second floor. This is because of snow. Nobody actually walks on the street but me.
Interspersed with the dedicated medical facilities are hotels, steak restaurants, parking lots, chic boutiques, martini bars, malls, salons, places to buy bottled water for $3 a pop and anything else a captive and somewhat disabled audience could require—wheelchair entrances, handicapped suites, hot and cold running walkers and pills pills pills. If I were a drug addict Topkapi I would climb the balconies of the Marriot and prowl the corridors of the Kahler Suites and put Medicare out of business.
This is the world headquarters of Ill-Anon, a place for those who have complaints about their complaints, but like a lobster with it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It all sounds good, but what's the Heinie situation?