by Elaine Green

hen Melissa Chan was a little girl in Hong Kong, she told her mother she wanted to be a doctor. “I got my chance because my family came here,” she says now, sitting behind her desk in her elegant Mott Street office. “I could pursue my goals, go to college and medical school. Now I have a chance to help other people, give back to my community.”

But “giving back” is challenging, says Chan, who is fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and English. Most of her patients are Chinese and seek her care along with the herbs and compounds of local herbalists. “A lot of my patients do take herbs,” Chan says, alert to potential problems when Western pharmaceuticals interact with the unregulated, sometimes-unpredictable supplements. “They may deny it, but when their test come back with elevated liver function or blood abnormalities, they admit it.”

Chan’s none too keen on herbal therapies. But as befits a caregiver with one foot in the world of the East and the other due West, she seeks to balance both to best serve her patients. Of acupuncture, Chan says, “I am Chinese, and I was skeptical” – but that didn’t prevent her mastery of the ancient therapy. Now, as a licensed

acupuncturist, she considers it a useful complement, especially for muscle pain and to soothe the nausea and vomiting linked with cancer.

Much of her practice is consumed with treating high blood pressure and diabetes, illnesses endemic in the West and increasing in Eastern populations. In addition, “hepatitis B is rampant,” says Chan, and carries the risk of liver failure and possible liver cancer. The infection passes easily from mother to child and between sexual partners, and can often go unnoticed until serious damage occurs. Chan traces its presence in the community to the high population of immigrants, who may not receive regular screenings (and may avoid immunizing their children, too), and to the highly contagious nature of the infection.

Nearly a decade out of medical school and three years into her solo practice, Chan has privileges at NYU’s Downtown Hospital and at Beth Israel Hospital. Being part of the close-knit Asian community offers her a certain sense of pleasure. “I’ve always been here,” she says (she arrived at age 10). “Families come to me, I get to know their grandchildren.” Her own daughter, Audrey, is 15 months old.

That same intimacy takes an emotional toll. “When patients die, it’s hard, it’s tough. Some of my long-time patients are getting older, getting sicker. It’s sad. But I tell myself, the day a patient passes away and I don’t feel sad, I should die, too.” From every appearance, that day is very, very far away.

Dr. Melissa M. Chan, 128 Mott Street, Suite #304 (bet. Grand and Canal), 212- 343-2536