Mayo & Brandon in the Media

Brandon was asked earlier this year to be a part of Mayo Clinic's Model of Care Video by one of his professors. She wanted him to be performing a breast exam as part of the video. Brandon accepted this invitation and participated in the filming of the video quite awhile ago. Anyway, the video just came out a couple of weeks ago on the front page of Mayo's Intranet Site. Brandon also received a copy of it himself. He did a great job and a couple of people at work have even mentioned that they saw my husband in the video. Here are a couple of pictures that he is in as well that are posted on the intranet site.

On Tuesday, Bill Clinton was in town for the dedication ceremony for Dan Abraham, the inventor of Slim Fast, who just donated $22 million for the building of a new workout facility for Mayo employees. They held a huge ceremony and in order to see it live, you had to put your name in for a drawing of tickets. I watched the webcast of it instead from my desk! Dan Abraham is little man who started donating money to Mayo after he received treatment from doctors at Mayo. He has been friends with Bill Clinton for awhile which is why Bill Clinton was the guest speaker. Dan Abraham said in his speech that he looked around and noticed that the employees were not in the best shape and he wanted to help! He previously donated money for a little workout facility that comprised of one floor of a building. Since I was spoiled from the brand new facility at Oregon State University, I came here and didn't know how it was possible to have over 30,000 employees and such a small workout facility. Well, the new facility just opened up a couple of months ago and it is huge compared to the old one. It now has a pool which I am very excited about, a spa and sauna, a ton of exercise machines, a track, rooms for group classes, a relaxation studio and a free water massage bed. The nice thing about the facility is that all of the classes are included with the $25/month fee and you are also able to get a personal trainer for free as well. I almost forgot to mention my two favaorite things about the facility: 1) each exercise machine has a personal TV in front of it, and 2) Once you have your personal training appointment, you are given a "Smart Key" which will tell you what machines you should use and it will set each machine for you. The trainers can then check on your status and email you updates. Also, if you use the facility a certain amount of times per month, your monthly rate also decreases. I just joined on Tuesday and already went last night and am planning to go again tonight after bible study. Now if I could only talk Brandon into joining and working out for the first time in his life!!

To see a video of the dedication ceremony and to see a little part of the new building, click on the following link and watch the video on the right hand side:
http://kaaltv.com/article/stories/S234180.shtml?cat=10217

Dan Abraham & Bill Clinton

Glenn Forbes, MD, Dan Abraham, Bill Clinton at Ceremony

A view of the inside of the new Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center with the new tv's on each machine

Here is a link to some more information about the ceremony:
http://postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?a=312904&z=2