CHARTING Her Course
With exacting precision, Heidi Nelson strives to make the world better
By Damaris Christensen
Photographs by Nate Howard
Despite her
busy and
demanding
career, Heidi
Nelson makes
sure her
daughter, Sarah,
has a strong
sense of family.
Walking into the Gonda
building—the centerpiece of
the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
Minn.—is like walking into a
public art gallery that also
happens to be one of the best
medical facilities in the world.
Above one of the main entrances,
thousands of tiny blown-glass
objects hang in clumps of greens,
golds and blues in a Dale Chihuly
work created especially for
Mayo. The occasional person
in a wheelchair buzzes by
mural-covered walls. On the
other side of the building, a
three-story curving glass wall
lets the crisp autumn sunlight
inside, while highlighting banks
of chrysanthemums and daisies
outside. It is a place where the
deep needs of illness do not
overpower the call to enjoy life.
“The environment is very
inspiring and sometimes that is so
necessary in our business,” says
Heidi Nelson, 54, a surgeon and
academic researcher at Mayo who
specializes in treating patients
with colon or rectal cancer. The
art is one of many indicators of
the hospital’s mission of holistic,
patient-centered care, she says.
Every person who works there
knows that they are part of a
collaborative team, Nelson says,
in which the patient comes
first, not the practitioner or the
department. And that is part of
what drew her there.
CR | Page No. 25 | www.CRmagazine.org
