About the Log Cabin

A Brief History of Lauderdale Wellness Center

Click here to view a Photo History of the building
or
Click here to view 2009 Clinic Expansion photos

My wife and I had been living in our little fixer-upper in lovely Lauderdale for several years. She was working as a nurse and I was attending Chiropractic school. My wife and I had agreed that the country doctors a couple generations ago really had the right idea. We should serve the community we live in, and provide an opportunity for individual, personalized health care.

Serving the community we live in would mean finding an office, well, in the community we live in. A classic case of easier said than done.

You see, Lauderdale is a tiny little suburb and commercial real estate is scarce. But there was this one property . . . it was a great location, it was the right size . . . and it was hideous. I mean a real eyesore.

I passed it every day on the way home. A rundown cinder block nightmare of a building about three blocks from our house in Lauderdale. For months I had been commenting to my wife that ‘someone’ really needed to do something about that place. Perhaps her comment was meant to be rehtoricalc, but she uttered five, probably accidental, words.

“Maybe we are that ‘someone’.” She said.

Those five words sealed her fate. She is to blame for the two years of utter madness that followed.

So, in the midst of Chiropractic school and three weeks after our daughter, Ruby, was born, our purchase of that eyesore was final.

Two years and thousands of hours of sweat equity later, and Lauderdale Wellness Center was finally born. Our little Log Cabin in the middle of the ‘burbs. I am proud to say that both the physical structure and the clinic within are things that our community can be proud of. We opened the doors in January of 2005. The response from the community has been fantastic.

That first year was a busy time. A new clinic is like a new child. It may have all of its parts, but is basically helpless until you nurture it and teach it some things. Why the child analogy? We will get to that.

So in the midst of teaching our clinic how to be a good, responsible, upstanding member of its community, we also managed to find some like-minded health care practitioners who wanted to share this wonderful new space with us. I must say we did a stellar job of this, they are a fantastic group of people.

And along came Charlie. (Our second born? third if you count the new clinic). That’s why the baby analogy? Foreshadowing. In March of 2005 (three months after the clinic was born) Charlie came screaming and kicking into this world . . . Interestingly, the same things his mother was doing when he came into this world. Kids learn so fast.

So, two years, two kids and one wonderful wellness center later, here we are. Back to “Normal” life. My wife, Dana, manages the clinic and she is a great boss. I am the clinic director and primary chiropractor and I answer to her. If you ask her, she will tell you that I am a pain it the butt to have as an employee, but she just cant seem to find anyone else who would do the job better.

And that’s that. Our family owned and operated clinic is a short walk from our home and many of our clients are neighbors. My wife is in charge and sometimes even our children come to ‘help’ mom and dad at work.

In an odd way it feels like a little slice of Norman Rockwell’s America, and I couldn’t be happier about it.