Yo DaVitans!

It is Saturday morning, and it feels good to be back home.

It felt great to visit the Casa on Thursday — they asked some very important questions in the Town Hall, as did the FA’s in the separate Town Hall I did with them later in the day.  The FA’s were in the Casa for the weeklong DaVita University FAST class.  They were a wonderfully warm and straightforward group.

I finished my meetings up about 6:20 and then did the 2.5 hour drive down to San Diego.  Once I got there I met with Dennis Kogod, your COO, and another executive.  We did dinner and had a very productive set of business discussions until midnight — the two primary subjects were (a) 7 of our executives, how they were doing, whether we should change their responsibilities, what their development needs were, etc, and (b) competitor activities.

Friday started with a medium quality workout in the hotel gym.   20 medium minutes on the lifecycle, 33 push-ups, a little stretching — a total of only 23 minutes.  Not impressive, but much better than nothing, and I was in a hurry.

I had good meetings all day at ASN (the big annual meeting of nephrologists from all around the world).  At 6:15 our own reception for our own affiliated nephrologists began — we got a good turnout, and everyone was in a good mood.  We had 43 abstracts accepted and posted at the meeting, a big number and many non-DaVita people were quite impressed!  It is a reflection of the fact that we are becoming intellectual leaders in striving to advance kidney care, no brag just fact.

It was a tired boy that flew on a late plane home, arriving there about 1 am.  Since I never really got to eat dinner I made myself a little food.  I used the long day as an excuse to have a big bowl of ice cream.  This fact, combined with the mediocre workout and 2 diet cokes meant this was not a strong day for the health campaign — not disgusting, but not strong.  Such is life, today is another day.

I hope you all enjoy your weekend, and get in some good minutes and healthy living.  I have to admit I am tired so I will have to force myself to do good exercise today.  If I wasn’t part of a campaign with 790 of you, I might have skipped today even though I have plenty of time.  But I won’t skip it — We Said, We Will Do.  Thanks for the support, and back at you.

One for All & All for One,

KT

Yo DaVita,

I am on the plane to LA and the Casa.

A nice tidy workout this morning.  20 solid minutes on the bike, 75 crunches, 32 push-ups, and 6 minutes of stretching.  Total of 30 minutes.

Some have asked what my normal breakfast is.  It has been the same for about 8 years now.

When I am at home, a bowl of cereal — shredded wheat plus bran, with some honey nut cheerios mixed in.  for the last 3 months i added a third ingredient, another whole wheat cereal called kashi or something.  more whole grain variety.  then I have either some ham or sausage for protein.  i recently converted to organic sausage.  I am a big believer that protein is an essential part of breakfast, as it burns far more evenly and over a longer period than carbs.  I think this is one reason I rarely feel any desire for caffeine in the morning — i am burning the protein, as opposed to the glycemic spike of having a bunch of processed carbs and a spurt of energy which evaporates a couple hours later.

When I am on the road, I have shredded wheat with a sliced banana.  If they don’t have shredded wheat I have whatever other high-fiber, low-sugar cereal they have.  If the only high fiber cereals they have are high sugar (like Raisin Bran) I have mixed berries or whatever fruit they have, with my ham.  On the road I probably have 2 eggs every other day also.

It was fun working out this morning with my 784 health partners!  Live On !!

One for All,

KT

Check out KT’s exercise grid: http://villageweb.davita.com/go/?id=46044

Good Morning DaVita!

It is Thursday am.  I did not have a DaVita call at 6:30 am today, which is good.  Instead that was the time for my alarm’s wake-up call, and 20 minutes later I am poised to do a little workout.

Last night’s workout was surprisingly good.  32 intense minutes on the lifecycle, 70 crunches (sit-ups), 30 high quality push-ups, and 4 minutes of stretching.  Total minutes = 39.  With such a late workout I did not feel like eating too much for some reason, and so dinner was also reasonable.  Since I had a light breakfast and fish for lunch with only an apple snack, it was a strong day on the calorie front.  Rounding out the good news of the day, only .5 of a diet coke.  I am trying to train myself to drink them far more slowly, and to only drink the amount I really want, as opposed to necessarily gulping down the full can every time I open one.

After my workout I head to the airport.  I look forward to visiting the Casa for the first time in awhile.  I will do a Casa town hall there, and a bunch of meetings, including some earnings call prep, a professional development session, and I think a DaVita University Facility Administrator town hall as well.  Then about 6:30 pm I will drive to San Diego, approximately 2 hours.  During the drive I will catch up on DVA voicemail and talk to Cheryl, my lifeline/assistant, about the next month’s scheduling, to see what else we can squeeze in.  Once I get to San Diego I have a 9:30 dinner with Dennis Kogod, our COO, and Tom Usilton, to go over a long list of issues.

Have a healthy day!

KT

Check out KT’s exercise grid: http://villageweb.davita.com/go/?id=46044

Greetings to the Good People of the DaVita Village!

It is Wednesday night, 8:10 pm.  Because of a little business emergency I had to start work at 6:30 this morning, so I could not do my morning workout.  Darn.

Therefore I will be heading for my trusty lifecycle after I type this up.  I ate an apple with peanut butter a couple hours ago, since I knew I would be working until about this time and if I was too hungry I might not have had the will to go workout.  The peanut butter provides protein and negates much of the glycemic reaction to an apple, while still getting the boost and nutrients from the apple.

Wonderful MaryKay Gilhooly will attach my MM II grid covering all the days so far, and summarizing how the first 2 full weeks went.  Not bad!

Today I drove up to Sacramento for a meeting with a member of our Board of Directors.  No productivity loss as I was able to do phone calls the whole 2 hour drive, in each direction.  Tomorrow I fly to the Casa DaVita in Los Angeles, and then tomorrow night I drive a couple hours to San Diego for ASN, the annual meeting of nephrologists from around the world.  On Friday night DaVita hosts a simple wine and appetizer event for our physician partners.  I will attend the first couple of hours and then catch a late flight home, hopefully arriving before midnight.

No more typing, it is time to pedal.  Some have asked what I do on the lifecycle — 90% of the time I do DaVIta voicemail!  I get quite a few a day.  As I get more and more out of breath on the bike I switch to only listening, without responding.  On the really tough hills I just hang up and hang on.

We were up to 784 signed up participants as of a few days ago!  It is fun to picture yourself working out with that big a group — reminds me of that Verizon(?) commercial, where you get the benefit of all those people.

All the best!

Check out KT’s exercise grid: http://villageweb.davita.com/go/?id=46044

Yo DaVita!

Good morning!  IT is Wednesday am, I will be driving up to Sacramento for a meeting in a couple of hours so I thought I would submit my latest journal entry to MM II.

Life is returning to normal.  Son back at school, etc.  Here is the news on my pursuit of MM II goals”

a.    Minutes of exercise

On Monday, a solid 27 minutes on the bike, followed by sit-ups and some stretching.  Total of 35 minutes of healthy exercise.

On Tuesday, a strong 33 minutes on the bike, followed by sit-ups, push-ups, plank and above-average stretching.  A total of 50 minutes.

b.    Diet Cokes — I still have the craving, but it is reduced somewhat.  1.5 on Monday and ZERO yesterday.  This part of MM is really working for me, I am way down from previous consumption, and getting used to having more and more water.

c.    Weight — 194 this am, down a net one pound.  Given day to day variability, too close to say much about.  I ate very well yesterday, all 3 meals … and promptly rewarded myself with a big bowl of ice cream last night.  I love ice cream.

Thanks for all your kind messages and support.  They do make a difference.

Carpe Diem!  (Latin for “Seize the Day!”)

KT

(Spiritual practice is what you are doing right now …. Buddhist saying)

Yo DaVitans,

It is Sunday night.  I have been absent for a few days.  I am accountable for that, and apologize.  Here is why:

2 weeks ago, at 11 pm on Saturday night, Denise and I received that call a parent dreads.  It was from the Emergency Room of a hospital saying our 21 year-old son had been in an accident.

Let me immediately jump ahead and say that he had his second and final surgery 2 days ago, on Friday.  After a long rehab, he will almost completely recover.  We have much to be thankful for, it could have been far worse.  He will be back at school as of tomorrow.

I arrived at the ER by midnight.  I was with him when they admitted him to the hospital at 3 am.  I stayed with him in his hospital room.  By the time the nurse finished all the transitional procedures around vitals, drugs, etc, it was after 4 am.   They gave me a cot to sleep next to his bed, and woke us up at 5:15 to take us into emergency surgery, in the first possible time slot at 6 am.  I had not held my son’s hand for awhile, but I did that a lot in  the hospital that night, and as we waited for them to wheel him into the OR that morning.

I was there, of course, when he woke up.  And when he had the waves of pain and they worked on stabilizing the meds.  Denise took over in the mid-afternoon, and I went home to sleep for 2 hours and to do an important and time sensitive DaVita conference call.  Then I returned to the hospital, and we stayed until he was getting ready for sleep.

For those of you who are reading this blog regularly, you might remember I said that I missed exercise on a Sunday for perhaps the first time all year.  This was why. Read more…

Yo DaVitans !

I hope you are all well, and hitting your goals for minutes of exercise!  We are all in this together.

I already reported my medium intensity exercise of 25 minutes on Monday am.  My foot continued to give me quite a bit of trouble, unusally so even for when my chronically termpermantal achilles tendon is discombobulated.   One thing that always impresses me when I have to walk very slowly.  It gives you alot of time to think about what you are doing, to be fully “present” in the Buddhist sense.

Since I only got about 4-5 hours sleep on Sunday night, Monday was a bad diet coke day as I sat in meetings all day and then did email on the plane.  3 of those bad boys.

I did eat reasonably well, until I had buttered popcorn in substantial quantity at 10 pm that night, as I watched part of the Packers game which had been tivo’d on sunday.  It was wonderful!

But the foot caused me significant pain again on Monday night.  I literally almost crawled to the bathroom at 1 am to take 600 mgs of ibuprofen to cut the pain enough to allow some sleep.  I took some more about 4 am.  Like Monday, I woke up before the alarm went off, quite unusual for me, but the foot was sounding it’s own alarms.

Fortunately my son had an appt with an orthopedic surgeon at 8:15 Tuesday morning.  I joined him.  The doc was not sure what was wrong — some of the normal symptoms of my achilles problem were not in appearance.  He put me in a boot.  I had to cancel my business trip, it would have involved too much walking around.  My apologies to the billing/collecting and legal teams, I was goin to do town hall meetings for each of them as parts of the trip.  darn.  I have an MRI tomorrow, on Wednesday, to see what is going on under the swelling.

Given the big opening in my schedule, I did get a tremendous amount of desk work done, with my foot propped up in various and sundry uncomfortable ways.  So a pretty good silver lining in this cloud!

As to the MM II goals, when I told my wife I was going to do a carefully controlled workout, isolating the foot to keep it in one position and therefore not stress it, she almost took my head off.  So no workout on Tuesday.  Although just walking around is a bit of a workout with this boot on.

I did only have one diet coke, and it appears I am still down 1 pound or so, that is what the scale is consistently saying.  I believe I heard the doctor recommend vanilla ice cream as part of the recovery plan, so I did have some of that before gimping off to bed.  as Mary Poppins sang “a spoonful of ice cream helps the advil go down”.

Life’s rich pageant.

Take Care,

KT

Dear DaVita,

Well it is Monday morning and Sunday finished a little rockier than I thought.  My plane landed at about 11:30 Denver time.  It was only then that I realized I could barely walk.

Turns out I pushed my achilles tendon too hard on the late afternoon ride.  I kept it temporarily loose by the swimming and hot tub therapy I did after the ride.  But once I sat in a plane seat working for 2.5 hours letting it stiffen up and be subject to the pressurization, boom!

Nice people carried my stuff off for me.  I got in my car, took 2 advil.  I entered the hotel lobby in such a pathetic way they offered a wheelchair to take me to my room.  I declined their kind offer, because I figured it would loosen up a bit if I just walked slowly.  Once in my room the nice bellman went and got a lot of ice, and we filled up a wastebasket with water and ice.  I soaked my lower leg for 11 freezing minutes, and took 2 more advil.   The good news is the pain made it easier to resist the temptation to order late night dessert from room service.  Lights not off until 2 am, and an uncomfortable night, so today will be a bit of a challenge.

I woke up at 6:25 am without the alarm, very unusual for me.  I went down to the gym for a very gentle session on the lifecycle.  I kept the seat a little low, and did not do any hills.  But I got 20 minutes of medium cardio in, and was able to do some sit-ups and push-ups with a little stretching and virtually no pain.  Total minutes of 25.

We had a good call with the Chairman of Fresenius this morning, discussing Washington DC stuff.  Soon I will be off to review two proposals for our new headquarters, then a couple other meetings, then a flight home.  I will be moving slowly all day.

We do want you to consider sharing your experiences with others!  That way we can all share in the ups and downs of our day to day efforts to lead slightly healthier lives.

All the best, slowly yours,

KT

Greetings to the Good People of DaVita,

It is 8 pm on Sunday night.  I am typing this on a plane to Denver.  I wll land about 11 pm Denver time, get in my hotel room about midnight, and be in bed by 1 am or so.  The good thing about plane flights is that I can work every minute with no interruptions, which is a good thing.  I will be back home to California for dinner tomorrow, then fly to Arizona for some operational meetings and one external speech.  Then I will fly back home on Wednesday, in time for a late dinner.

Today was a solid day:

1.    Because I messed up my achilles tendon in my friday night run, I went in for some therapy.  The older I get the more time I have to spend on stretching and rehab, neither of which is fun for me.

2.    I had a strong bike ride, logging my third best time on the Old La Honda Hill (27:10).  The total ride was 70 minutes.  Plus 20 minutes of stretching, trying to make up for my sins earlier in the week.

3.    2 diet cokes.  Reasonable eating, so far.

4.    I did do about 5 hours of DaVita work today, and I will do 2 more on this flight.   More than I would like, but it is an intense stretch and I don’t want to let you down.  I tivo’d the packers game, so I can watch it and skip thru all the down-time some night this week when I am at home.

I hope each of you had good weekends.  Those of you that are sending me messages direct to my email, please consider sending them to the blog so that others can share your energy and good thoughts.

Take Care,

KT

Yo DaVita !

Time to report in on Saturday, day 7 of this 60 day partnership campaign.  Later on today or tomorrow I will also post a summary of Week #1.  I want to thank many of you for your messages of encouragement — there were a couple times this week where I know I would have done something “bad” but knowing I would have to report it out to my “partners” gave me the strength to resist.

Yesterday, Saturday that is, was a strong all-round day:

1.      A wonderful and exhausting 2 hour 15 minute road bike ride.  Including a 59:33 climb up one of the biggest hills in the area, the Page Mill Hill (is it permissible for me to point out I beat out my 35 year old biking partner, who is in good shape, by 6 minutes?  altho perhaps he was out late the night before!).  The 59:33 time beat my previous best time up that climb by over 4 minutes.   Only 6 minutes of stretching, so I am paying a bit of a price for that.

2.    Only 1 diet coke.

3.    Reasonable meals all day, in quantity and quality, and no dessert.  It does appear I am down to a morning weight of 194, down one pound from a week ago.  But it is difficult to rely on such small movements.

4.    Our son was home with his girlfriend, and our daughter came home with her roommate, and so we had a wonderful family dinner.  Such a treat for the mommy and daddy.

5.    I got a few good hours of DaVita work in, I am still playing catch-up from my recent trip to India, a Board of Directors meeting, and some “normal” work emergencies.  I look forward to getting in about 5-6 hours of DaVita catch-up today, it will give me a better shot at being a good Service Excellence leader this coming week.

Congratulations to those of you who scored some progress in the first week!  And thanks again for your encouragement.

One for All & All for One,

KT

(judge not those who try and fail.  rather those who fail to try.)