Today I headed to the doctor with all four of my children. William had already had his well-child checkup, but the other three needed them, and I needed a third opinion on what my hormones are doing to my chin. I’m thinking that if I were a doctor, I’d be excited to see all of these people in one family coming to see me. I’d be thinking that if I worked the situation just right, I could probably make at least one house payment off this crew.

An hour before our appointment, the receptionist (We’ll call her Ms. Happy!) called to ask me to print off all of the forms on the computer so that I could have them ready when I arrived at my appointment. I immediately printed them off, gathered necessary information, and filled out the forms. Of course, I didn’t plan on her calling me an hour before the appointment so I didn’t know that I wasn’t going to have the thirty minutes it took to get the forms done - those precious thirty minutes that I needed to get myself and everyone else ready to go.

Very organized and quietly, we arrived at the doctor’s office 15 minutes late. Now, I know that I have a reputation for being late, and I accept that. I even accept the consequences when I feel that they are justified; however, today’s tardiness was the fault of Ms. Happy, not me. She immediately gave me “the look” and informed me that I was 15 minutes late. I reminded her that she had changed my schedule just a little with her phone call, but I still couldn’t find any hint of a smile. She “sweetly” reminded me that I was already a patient there and knew that I could print off the sheets ahead of time - before her reminder phone call!

As she took all 5,000 of my sheets as well as my insurance card and the kids’ immunization cards, the line behind me grew longer. She had to hole punch my forms and put them in the folders, make notes on the inside of the folders, and enter our information into the computer. As she became more agitated, I offered to make a new appointment for me to see the doctor. I also offered to come back another time so that she would have more time to enter our information into the computer. Honestly, she was making me angry and sad at the same time. In some perverted way, I was wishing that William was going to be seen as well, thinking, “You think checking four of us in is bad? What if I’d had all five of us checking in at the same time?”

Meanwhile, my children were being perfect angels, sitting on the couches perfectly still and quiet. (Evidently, they sensed that I was teetering between going off on Ms. Happy or just riding out the storm!) Once she was finished with me, I went to sit down and watched the stress I had delivered totally consume this normally pleasant woman. We had, simply put, pushed her right over the edge!

Two and one-half hours later as we were leaving the doctor with four prescriptions and three of us being diagnosed with illnesses (so much for well-child), the doctor was thrilled. She was almost giddy as she thanked us for coming in to see her and talked about how fun it was to spend that time with us. (Like I said, at least one house payment!) Two of us even get to have return visits! As we walked through the waiting room, there was Ms. Happy, only changed. She was back to her friendly self, talking and laughing with me. Obviously, we had completely overwhelmed this precious lady. And that was on one of our good days!