Sharing Mayo Clinic

I’ve always enjoyed reading.  Browsing through bookstores and antique shops looking at books both old and new fascinates me.  Handling old books and thinking about the many other hands that have touched the same book, leafed through the same pages and enjoyed the same printed words piques my imagination. Therefore, working in the Mayo Foundation History of Medicine Library is almost too good to be true.  The volumes of rare medical classics and early journal literature comprise the core collection of primary literature on all aspects of medicine dating as far back as 1479.  I like to think of this specialized section of the library as the jewel in the crown of the Mayo Library system. 

Doctors at Mayo Clinic in Florida and Minnesota are using a new technique to stabilize glaucoma and preserve vision. Glaucoma is an eye disease that slowly damages the vision. A leading cause of blindness, it occurs when the eye’s natural drainage system fails to work properly. Fluid builds up inside the eye leading to elevated pressure that can permanently damage the optic nerve.

This story was submitted by Nimaat Al Azzah, Breast Cancer Survivor and Mayo Clinic Patient Life is full of surprises -- some are happy and some can flip one’s world all around. In October, on my 37th wedding anniversary, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was looking forward to celebrating this day with my family but with a casual visit to the gynecologist, this dream was shattered. He felt something suspicious on my right breast and arranged for an immediate mammography appointment. On the day of the mammogram I got dressed like any other day but the fear, anxiety, worrisome was not like any other day. Two of my daughters came along to the lab. After the mammogram, the specialist asked to meet with me and my daughters and told me that I had cancer in my right breast and that I could live for another five years. While she was talking, my eyes were on my daughters -- one of them was crying and the other was in shock. As soon as she finished, my motherly instinct was to protect my daughters from the hurt and reassured them that people’s lives and destinies are all in God’s hands, and it is only for God to determine how long each of us will live. I thanked her and left the lab.

Most would not consider the tuba to be especially calming or gentle. But James Jenkins, a concert tubist with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, proves that not only do people enjoy his music, but patients at Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus actually request it. As part of its commitment to holistic healing, Mayo Clinic offers patients and the community, art and music entertainment through Humanities in Medicine. The program partners with local entertainers and artists to bring performances to the campus and musicians like Jenkins to the bedsides of hospitalized patients.

Approximately two to three times each year, Mayo Clinic employees are given the opportunity to participate in "Walk to Wellness," a walking campaign designed to ...

  A CT heart scan produces stunning images of heart arteries and can diagnose serious disease, but it exposes a patient to the radiation equivalent of about 600 chest X-rays. While the risk of developing cancer from the radiation is unknown, it may exist and should make patients who have no symptoms of heart disease think twice before agreeing to such scans. “If a person has symptoms such as chest pain, the benefit of using these tests to come up with a diagnosis and a treatment plan outweighs the small potential risk,” says Thomas Gerber, M.D., a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus who was the U.S. lead author of an international study examining radiation doses in cardiac CT scanning. “However, the benefit of performing these scans in patients without symptoms is still unclear, and patients should know that.”

Mayo Clinic has a rich history within the nursing profession and continues to strive to "provide the best nursing care in the world." And there ...

Editor's Note: Madeline Stockbridge submitted this story by email after receiving the print edition of the Sharing Mayo Clinic newsletter. She wrote "After reading the ...

When Ali Nowotny was just 15, she began to“blank out.” It was summer of 2006, and she was working as a waitress in her hometown of Rapid City, S.D. The episodes occurred about once a month, and left her “spaced out” for several minutes, slurred her speech and gave her headaches. Ali shrugged them off. But when her boss witnessed an episode, Ali got the encouragement she needed to see a neurologist. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed an abnormality on the left side of her brain. Her doctor prescribed medications to control what was diagnosed as a type of epilepsy called partial complex seizures. Medications reduced episodes from 15 to 20 times a day once a month to two to three seizures one day a month.

Each year, Universum Communications hits the inbox of thousands of students across the United States, surveying them as to their preferred employers and employment attributes. ...

Melissa Shultz, a freelance writer living in Plano, Texas, wrote an article for Newsweek online about her son Nick's mysterious illness and his diagnosis and ...

Part of my job as a clinical dietitian is to teach others how to be healthy. I'm sure other employees feel as I do that sometimes ...