Fabens Native returns to practice medicine in her hometown

Dr. Marissa Flores is back in her hometown of Fabens, Texas. She’s not spending the days the way she used to as a child, playing basketball and running track. Now she’s writing prescriptions and doing check-ups, part of her job as a Family Medicine doctor at the very clinic she was treated at as a child. University Medical Center’s Fabens clinic is much bigger than it used to be, and has gone through major upgrades. It even has it’s own pharmacy and lab.

“My dad comes here, my mom comes here, my little sister, aunts and uncles. They’ve been coming here for years. They love their doctors, they trust them,” says Dr. Flores. She, too, has fond memories of being at the clinic with her mother. She laughed when recalling a time she tried to run away from her immunizations.

Many patients come to the clinic for preventive care. Dr. Flores does a lot of healthcare screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies. She also helps those struggling with hypertension and diabetes, two of the most common problems in the community.

“I wanted to come back here and do this. I didn’t know how long it would take or if i’d be able to work here but that was the dream, the goal,”she says.

This September, that dream of returning home came true, and this 2007 graduate of Fabens High School is now seeing patients.

“In bigger cities you’re readily able to access specialists, but here they have to go to El Paso and you may not think that’s a big deal but they may not have a vehicle – and that’s one of the biggest problems in rural communities…is access to specialists,” Dr. Flores says.

Happy to be home near friends and family, Dr. Flores seems to be soaking it all in. “I feel lucky. I feel blessed,” she says with smile. University Medical Center of Fabens and the patients there surely feel the same.