A burn to work in the medical profession came early for Joshan George, our newest member of the Tulsa Spine and Rehab team. Becoming a chiropractor came later because he believes life is best when we follow where we’re led.
He grew up in Michigan where his mom was a nurse. He remembers accompanying her to different activities at the hospital as a kid. It was a place he felt comfortable. That’s why his college career took an MD route. He graduated from The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as a Biology major with a pre-med focus before working at a physical therapy clinic.
That’s when things shifted.
“I took a job at a physical therapy clinic, just as a one-year gig,” he says. “I was planning to take my MCATs and get patient care experience which would propel me toward getting my MD.”
To avoid confusion with a doctor at the clinic with a similar name, they began calling him Dr. George—and it stuck. Today everyone knows him as Dr. George.
Five and a half years later, he was still working at the clinic because things changed. The friend of a co-worker lit his fire to become a Chiropractor.
“When we talked, I was intrigued by how natural ways help heal,” he says. “I always joke that I probably heard the term chiropractic maybe twice in my life before that encounter.”
“I gained more appreciation of how the body works as a system,” he says of chiropractics. “I saw how stretching and rehabbing with exercising played a part in helping to improve people’s health. I started getting engaged with the hands-on approach, manual therapy, and other therapies.”
How he met his wife Melody and joined the team at Tulsa Spine and Rehab are still more examples of how Dr. George follows where he feels led.
It turns out Dr. George and Melody knew each other for about 20 years with friends in common. However, it took friendly encouragement and a not-so-chance encounter to move things along.
“We were in a wedding, helping out with the music,” he says. “A couple of her cousins reached out and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in seeing her?’”
Dr. George did what he always does. He prayed about it because he was in Michigan and Melody lived in Tulsa working as a hospital pharmacist. Then, he followed where he was led.
“I wanted to make sure we were right,” he says. “Especially with the long distance, if it’s even gonna be worth it like I needed to make sure.”
Before long he felt things were pointing in the right direction. He planned a trip to Tulsa—on the way to a Kansas City conference—so they could spend a day together. Unfortunately, what could go wrong did.
“I had my flight delayed,” he says. “It looked like I’d miss my connecting flight to Tulsa.”
“I prayed, ‘if this is meant to be, I wanna catch this flight,’” he remembers.
He made it with 10 minutes to spare.
The rest reads like a romance movie: A long-term, long-distance relationship of phone and FaceTime calls culminating in a wedding and his relocation to Tulsa. Once here, he happened to contact Dr. Riley just as the search began for an added Chiropractor at Tulsa Spine and Rehab. That’s what comes of following where your led.
“I feel that, at the end of the day, it’s always about seeing how patients improve,” Dr. George says. “If we can get patients to start believing that they can make themselves better without going into surgery or go into extensive repairs or recovery. Then, it’s like, yeah, this is, this is what you do. This is, this is why you do it.”
