You would think that the job of checking a patient in and getting them back to a room to see the physician would be a simple, well-rehearsed process. Especially when it happens in our office over 100 times a day.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. More than just a few times, we have had patients get lost in that process. Some of them even lost in the clinic. I hope that we have found them all. If one of your loved ones is missing, give me a call. They could be in one of our 19 exam rooms.

Laurel came to see me as a new patient because she was depressed. For months, it seemed to her that nobody loved her and that no one even noticed her. She wasn’t needed on this earth and she “might as well go eat worms” as the children’s song goes.

You guessed it. We forgot her in the clinic.

She sat out in our waiting room for over four hours while all the front office staff checked in everybody else, went to lunch and back, and carried on with all the other tasks that fill their busy work day.

But this was a God-send in my opinion. We laughed about that for several minutes that day after someone finally asked about “the woman who has been sitting out in the waiting room for so long” and she finally was brought back to see me.

And we still laugh about that today, recovered from her depression and not feeling like no one even notices her anymore. Sometimes, laughter truly is the best medicine.