By Nick Jacobs

In a conversation with my son recently, he reminisced about the "good ole days" when I was not working in healthcare. He talked about the fun that we had had with friends and relatives and the laughter that we shared.

I'll never forget running into a young man at the hospital several years ago whose father had worked with me back in the early pre-healthcare years. He said, "My dad told me that you were in healthcare management. He also told me that you had lost your sense of humor."

Both declarations were true. We deal everyday in a profession that involves life and death. In fact, our decisions can sometimes mean life or death to our patients.

And it takes its toll on us.

Yet, when it's all said and done, after being in each other's lives for over 30 years, the one thing that my son remembered as the definitive "missing piece" was the loss of my ability to just have FUN.

So, don't let your sense of humor slip away.

When something upsets me, my Chief Medical Officer, Director of Emergency Medicine looks at me and says, "It's okay. No one died." Truly the measure of success in his world.

It's clear that we need to find outlets that allow us to not be in the fish bowl for a while. Outlets that do not force us to put our sense of humor on hold.

At one point in my life, I knew four very successful, wealthy business CEO's, and, although they had serious philosophical differences, they had two common threads: 1. They NEVER watched television news. 2. They always found a way to laugh and make it fun. Okay, maybe there was a third. They were rich!

To quote Henny Youngman: "A man goes to a psychiatrist. The doctor says "You're crazy" The man says "I want a second opinion!" "Okay, you're ugly too!"

Okay, okay. I tried.