Another thing she did to expand her friendships was to learn tennis, a sport that her husband plays and that her 13-year-old son plays competitively. Two years ago she took lessons and eventually joined a league. “A number of my current friends now are from that group of women,” she said.
▸ Find a hobby. If you engage yourself in a hobby such as record collecting or league participation in your favorite sport, “you end up meeting a lot of people from all different walks of life and all different fields, yet you share that common interest,” Dr. Flamm said.
Two years ago he joined a local astronomy club. He had dabbled in astronomy in high school, “but not seriously,” he said.
The club holds monthly meetings in a local auditorium and monthly star viewing parties in the desert. “Not viewing for Hollywood stars,” he quips. He makes every effort to attend the events.
Becoming a collector is another way to meet people, added Dr. Flamm, who is a longtime collector of calculators. “Most of the people who are into that are engineers who have no interest in medicine at all, but you can meet various people,” he said. “When I was actively collecting calculators a few years ago, my wife and I would go to a flea market almost every weekend.”
Another enriching experience for Dr. Flamm has been acquiring a springer spaniel puppy named Zoe. He and his wife brought her home after their two 14-year-old dogs passed away last year, and they recently adopted a 3-month-old puppy named Hunter. They occasionally take Zoe and Hunter to dog-friendly parks in their area, “where you meet the nicest people who are always interested in dogs,” Dr. Flamm said.
Dr. Horbach noted the danger of living only for medicine is that you become “very one-dimensional. There is difficulty keeping up physician morale because of all the things we're battling in terms of finances, paperwork, and insurance. If you have a chance to branch out and talk with other people, you understand that many industries are going through some of the same challenges that we face in medicine.
Dr. Bruce Flamm finds that taking his dogs, Zoe (left) and Hunter (right), to a dog park is a good way to socialize. Courtesy Dr. Bruce Flamm
A Profile in Friendship
In the mid-1990s, Toni Harris, M.D., realized that pressures from her academic medicine post as chief of benign gynecology at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center were taking a personal toll.
“It was going to work at the crack of dawn and coming home after a normal person would eat dinner,” she recalled.
She resigned from the post in 1996 and went into private practice, but learned that the demands in that setting were greater than she expected. That segment of her career ended in 2002.
“I got into my 50s and I said, 'Life is now. One has no idea how long one's life will be,'” said Dr. Harris, who is back at the UC medical center part-time and is a partner in a medical device start-up company. “There are things I wanted in my life that weren't there.”
One of the goals she set for herself was to pursue friendships.
One of her most cherished, she said, is with a teenager, Chris Benderev, who is the son of a urologist she worked with in private practice.
“He was 10 when we became friends, and we have actively cultivated that relationship,” said Dr. Harris, who does not have her own children. “I'm more than a surrogate aunt, more like a truly good friend to a young person, and a mentor. He goes on vacations with my husband and me, he comes to see us without the rest of his family, and we get to participate in the decision-making process as he's gotten older about what he wants to do in life.”
Three years ago when her husband was on duty in Kosovo with the Army Reserve, she and Chris would go to the movies nearly every Friday night. “To have a 14-year-old boy want to go out to the movies with a 55-year-old nonrelative who he considers his friend has been one of the real honors of my life,” she said. “This is not some nerdy kid hanging out with some old woman. This is a real cool kid who's a class officer, has a big crowd of friends, and goes to rock concerts. Of course, when he wants to go to a rock concert, he calls me to see if I can go.”