July 23, 2008

Yo DaVita!

Greetings from what I think is Day 4.  I think i left you early on Day 3.

After my 6:30 to 8 am conference call on our quarterly earnings report I was only able to do a short but intense 16 minutes on the life cycle with some stretching after.  Before the call I had a healthy breakfast, shredded wheat with some cheerios to add flavor, plus some mixed berries, plus some ham.

Then into the Casa DaVita I went.  It was a fun day for the most part, a marketing meeting, a home-hemodialysis meeting (we are doing some interesting stuff there, and lots of learning.  We are probably doing more “mfd”, meaning more frequent dialysis, meaning short almost-daily dialysis, than anyone else in the country. By far!)  I also did a Town Hall with a group, and had lunch with two CEO’s who represent a group of 70 CEO’s.  They want to all come to the Casa, listen to me yap for 90 minutes about our concept of a Village, of actually trying to create a special place, of the fun stuff we do … and then ask questions.  So we are going to do that in March of 09, it will be very fun.  That lunch, by the way, was the healthy Chipotle lunch again, chicken with healthy beans, lettuce, and tomato salsa.

I also met with a search firm which is helping us find a VP of Communications, and with Anthony our soon-to-be CIO, replacing my good friend Harlan, who is stepping down from a wonderful career in September.

Anyway I only snacked on about 10 almonds and one banana during the day.  I left the office at 8 pm, when Cheryl my assistant/lifeline drove me to the airport so I could head for home (for those who don’t know, I live outside San Francisco, which is 350 miles from Los Angeles, where the Casa is … nobody said life would be easy).

I landed about 10 pm, after getting about 100 emails done on the plane, and clearing our voicemails at the airport.  Now I hope you agree that the first three days of the 9 in 90 Campaign were going strongly at this point.  I hope you agree because my wife met me at The Dutch Goose, a little burger joint near our house and I had a double cheeseburger!  It was awesome, and a great reward for my 2.9 good days on The Campaign.

I got to bed about midnight, and got up at 6 am to clear out new emails and prepare for a 7 am call with a Fresenius executive in Germany.  That call ended at about 7:30.  I sent out a summary, and then headed to the lifecycle.  I got a good 20 minutes in, not impressive but much better than zero.  Then I did my PT, ran in showered, wolfed down some shredded wheat with a few honey-nut cheerios, plus some ham and a banana.  Then I headed to the airport to fly to Virginia for a dinner with a physician group.  I am typing this on that plane right now   After the dinner I will fly to Washington DC, so I can start early with a full set of meetings there, since I have to fly to Ohio in the late afternoon for a dinner with another doc group there.

It feels good to have gone 3 days with very low sugar consumption, and no gluttony (a double cheeseburger does NOT count as gluttony in Wisconsin!).  Let’s see if I can avoid all sugar bombs here on Day 4 as well.

I got a great letter from a tm, who was inspired by the KT Community Grant that he applied for and received to help him and 100 others do some great service work for the disadvantaged in their community.  He has now doubled the size of that program, and has done some medical missions here in the United States as well.  You guys are amazing!  We do send forth Ripples of Citizen Leadership, no brag just fact.

Catch you later — this is KT, from the air … going back to work!