92-Year-Old NY Doctor Rides Subway to Work to See 200 Patients.

On the left, 92-year-old Dr. Melissa Freeman hard at work, and on the right, Dr. Freeman during her daily subway commute to work. (YouTube Screenshot | Good Morning America)

You may be surprised if we told you this 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.”

“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 music past, she opens up about what led her to the medical industry.

“I went to Music and Art to Hunter College,” Freeman relayed to Amsterdam News. “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 said, “Not that I can see in the near future, no.”

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

How important education is! Let Dr. Freeman’s life journey be an encouragement for all who yearn to study and make something of their lives, including parents who wish to motivate their children. Use your education to benefit others.