Where There's a Will, There is a Way!

Excerpts from an article by DANIEL CAMERON, EPOCH TIMES March 30, 2019

This 92-Year-Old NY Doctor rides subway to work to see 200 patients and she has no plans to retire.

You may be surprised if we told you t his lady is 92 years young, but she is! She’s been practicing medicine for around 60 years, and has no plans of retiring.

Meet Dr. Melissa Freeman. Each year, Dr. Freeman treats up to 200 patients at her private clinic, located in Harlem, New York. What’s incredible is that at her advanced age, she seems so full of vitality. She could well be retired, but she’s out there treating people who are addicted to opioids.

“Once addicted, it’s a very difficult problem to release,” she told Good Morning America host Robin Roberts in August 2018. “To see them straightening their lives up, it’s a very moving thing.”

Most likely it’s the positive changes she sees in the patients she treats that is what motivates her to keep doing what she does so well. “As long as God gives you life and gives me strength, I’ll have to keep doing it, and he has been very, very merciful for me.”

Moreover, in order to get around town, Dr. Freeman takes the subway.

“I’m a New Yorker...If I have to get somewhere and the subway is the best way to get there, I will board the subway and take it.”

Little would her patients know that Dr. Freeman is the granddaughter of a slave. Her grandfather and father did not have much opportunity to get an education, so they encouraged her to study hard.

“My father really emphasized the importance of an education,” said Freeman. “They all had this knowledge that their children needed to be educated. He didn’t talk much about it, but all of the children knew.”

Delving a little into her musical past, she opened up about what led her to the medical industry.

“I went to Music and Art to Hunter College… There was a family friend and she used to speak to me and she had a daughter who was a physician and she used to ask me me [sic] ‘Why don’t you become a physician? Why don’t you think about becoming a doctor?’

“I knew I wasn’t going to be a musician. I took physiology in college and I liked science,” Freeman continued. “But how was I gonna afford an education in medicine? My father had just died, there were no funds so I didn’t know what to do.”

And as the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

In order to study medicine, she balanced a couple of jobs with night classes. Eventually, she graduated from Howard University’s College of Medicine in 1955.

From there, her career in medicine flourished, and we can see that she derives much satisfaction from treating people.

When asked if she foresees herself retiring, she answered, “Not that I can see in the near future, no.”

In light of Dr. Freeman’s career in medicine, Confucius’ saying fits in quite perfectly—“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”