With rich stories and lessons from her life and a supportive family standing behind her, Dr. Lisa Nelson-Robinson can focus on her talent for helping heal the ones who seek her expertise.

As a general and vascular surgeon based with the Boice-Willis Clinic, Nelson-Robinson handles the demanding environment of work in the health care field with a sense of humor, an open mind and strong sense of self.

Photo by Joel Hodges (ENLARGE)

Lisa Robinson laughs with co-workers while filling out post-operation orders in the recovery room.

Whatever the day holds, the wife, mother and doctor meets each challenge head-on. She's ready not only to heal the sick but to hear what any of the variety of people she meets has to say that can brighten her day and deepen her love for her career.

Helping and Healing

Nelson-Robinson wasn't going to let anyone change her mind.

At a time when fewer than 200 African-American female surgeons aided patients across the country, she was determined to become one more.

A graduate of Yale University School of Medicine, she completed her internship and residency at UCLA Medical Center and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, respectively. Those busy years were marked by the happy arrival of the first of three daughters.

Since then, Nelson-Robinson has laughed and cried with patients in a variety of cities across the country, standing beside her husband during his service in the Marine Corps. She herself served as a 2nd lieutenant in the Public Health Service Corps.

A love for small-town life and a search for the perfect community to raise their children brought the New York City native and her family to Rocky Mount in 1993.

She sees patients and performs surgeries on them, including breast, carotid, laparascopic, thyroid and parathyroid surgery, giving them a chance to heal and grow.

"We were not interested in moving back to a big city," Nelson-Robinson says. "We came to Rocky Mount, and we've been loving it ever since."

During her days in the office, she may visit patients on rounds at the hospital, and then see an average of 30 to 40 patients at the clinic, do dictations, and eat a quick lunch in. The hectic schedule doesn't bother her much, since she's doing her life's calling.

"I love the office," she says. "It's amazing the personalities you meet throughout the day. Patients can brighten up your day."

The appeal of being a doctor comes from making a difference in people's lives, but it comes with the responsibility of sometimes having to tell patients what they don't want to hear. The reward comes from being able to buffer that harsh reality with good news.

"Even if I give people bad news, I can temper it with 'But I can do something for you,'" Nelson-Robinson says. "I love surgery because you're dealing with something you can generally fix. For me, that's rewarding."

Georgia Griffin, the licensed practical nurse who has worked with Nelson-Robinson for five years, notes the unique care the surgeon shows her patients.

"She laughs with them, but I've seen her sit and cry with them too," Griffin says. "She has compassion for her patients and a bedside manner that a lot of doctors don't have. It's something she has."

Although her devotion to being a wife and mother does not suffer, it's sometimes difficult for Nelson-Robinson to leave her work behind once the scheduled surgeries and office visits are complete.

She has been known to wake up at 3 a.m. with a nagging worry about one of her patients and call the intensive care unit to inquire about his or her condition.

It's a quality that her patients appreciate, but Nelson-Robinson is quick to add that many other professionals go through the same intensity at work.

"Teachers are like that, and so are cops revisiting the scene of a crime," she says. "If what you do is worth something to anybody, you're going to take it home."

A Peaceful Pace of Life

In the midst of becoming a doctor, with medical internships at her fingertips, a blessed event expanded Nelson-Robinson's world. Her first daughter, who is now 23, was born.

Now, with two other daughters, 16 and 14, the surgeon is relishing a slower pace of life – or, at least, a smaller, quieter, welcoming place where that life can unfold.

"Rocky Mount is a great family town," she says. "Having lived in both worlds (a big city and a small city), you definitely can make more time for your family."

Nelson-Robinson makes time for ball games, dinners and other family events, appreciating the quiet time in her life when she can look around and see what she has. "I want to really, truly raise them as opposed to having nannies and carpools," she says.

Griffin says she appreciates the way Nelson-Robinson approaches motherhood. "She's just a great mother, and that's really admirable," Griffin says.

Slowing down to notice her surroundings has made Nelson-Robinson enjoy the small-town, Southern atmosphere of Rocky Mount, something she never saw coming, being a New York native.

"I do say 'y'all' with alarming frequency," she laughs.

She likes the openness of strangers in Nash County, the ability to catch someone's eye on the street and exchange a smile.

"You can literally communicate with people on a genuine level you don't even know," she says. "Perfect strangers catch your eye and start to smile."

As often as she can, Nelson-Robinson escapes to the YMCA to exercise and work out her tension. She loves reading medical literature and fiction stories, and riding bicycles with her husband during a weekend. "We can ride 20 to 25 miles on a weekend," she says. "Get away from the traffic and ride."

A Sense of Service

That same vigor applies to the things Nelson-Robinson believes in.

Her own stint in the military taught her lessons, but her husband's Marine duty has shown her true grit. During one long stretch in a hospital in 1983, after visiting her husband on duty, she saw newspaper headlines about Marines killed in the barracks bombing in Beirut, Lebanon.

She was awestruck by how deep military service can go, even when servicemen were not physically in combat. She understood subjugation for the greater good.

"At that moment, I had the utmost respect for the military," she says.

That reverence carries over to earlier times in her life, when others taught her important lessons about who she is and how to persevere.

"My mother is who I got most of my drive and outlook from," she says.

Her mother emphasized the importance of an education and taking care of oneself. She taught Nelson-Robinson how to cook, and the family always ate together, another tradition she tries to keep alive today. She also learned from her mother how to balance such motherly care with a strong career.

"She said you can do both and do both really, really well," Nelson-Robinson recalls.

Her mother, born in Grenada, traveled to England to earn a nursing degree and serve as a midwife during World War II.

Another lesson Nelson-Robinson used as leverage was the support of one of her professors, who showed sincere interest in her ambition, even when there were few African-American female surgeons.

After watching the doctor help bring a man from the brink of death during surgery, Nelson-Robinson was dumbfounded and thought, "I want to be able to do that."

The professor told her he would stand behind her if she was sure surgery was the career path she wanted to pursue

It was.

With the spunk of a woman content with the facets of her life, Nelson-Robinson holds nothing back, whether in her office with a patient or with her children during a ball game.

She is straight-forward and succinct, looking for the right solution to bring another person's world back to normal. Looking back and looking forward, Nelson-Robinson plunges ahead with no holds barred.

"The best thing about my life," she says, "is that I love what I do."