If there is one thing that is important to all of us, it is time. Day in and day out we try to cram as much into the twenty-four hours we are given each day without wasting a moment of it. Usually, our time is spent well and the things we need to do get done. There is only one activity that takes place that completely disregards how valuable our time is and makes us waste hours of it doing absolutely nothing – going to the doctor.

Admit it, has there ever been a time in your life where you have made a doctor’s appointment and seen the doctor when you are scheduled to? I’ll bet your answer is no – and if it is yes – it has happened only a handful of times. We all have to go to the doctor for a variety of reasons, check ups, tests, and sometimes surgery, but why should something that is supposed to make us feel healthy make us so sick because we have to wait so long?

It seems that every time I go to the doctor – like right now, which is why I am writing this – I am scheduled for a certain time, but when I arrive at the doctor’s office for that scheduled appointment, it seems that there are at least ten other people who have the same appointment as I do – but there is only one doctor. This results in myself and all of the other patients waiting anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours until the nurse calls our name.

Let me ask you a question: if the president of an advertising agency was trying to sell an ad campaign to Pepsi Cola, and when the representatives of Pepsi arrived at the advertising firm, they were told that they would have to wait at least an hour before the ad reps would see them, do you think that ad firm would get the account? Of course not, so why are doctor’s allowed that privilege?

Here’s another question: when you are finally told that “the doctor will see you now”, how often is that statement true? I’ll bet that more often than not, you are taken into one of the doctor’s offices where you wait another fifteen to twenty minutes until you actually see a doctor.

And now the last and best question: in a ratio of wait time versus appointment time, which is more? I think you know the answer.

So to all the doctors out there I have this to say – I realize that you are a necessity in this world because without you we would not be as healthy as we are today, but time is just as important, because without time, there is no today.

I wonder how a doctor would feel if when they died and went to Heaven, the woman at the Pearly Gate said, “Please have a seat – St. Peter will be with you shortly.”