October 31, 2009

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