When Dr. Tammera Flores, who’s now in her second year of an internal medicine residency at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV, discusses her life, you want to share her story. The daughter of a carpenter and property manager and the first in her family to attend college, this Southern California native has made herself comfortable outside her normal comfort zone, taking calculated risks to explore a world far different from the one in which she had lived. 

In other words, she’s gutsy enough to live creatively. 

Tammera at 16

“I graduated high school at 16 but had no idea what to do with my life so I decided to leave community college and work and travel in the hope that through a real-world experience I could figure it out,” she said. “With the money I made from waitressing and other odd jobs, I moved to London, England, for a year when I was 18 and lived in a sort of low-income region of the city while working in a bakery that was owned by two Lebanese brothers who had fought in the Lebanese civil war. I made friends from all over the world and quickly realized from their questions how little I knew about my own country.

“Upon returning to the states, I earned my commercial driving license and drove teams as a long-haul truck driver through the lower 48. I worked and lived out of the truck and saw almost every state in the nation. I got paid to travel.”

Yes, Flores marches to the beat of a different drummer. 

“During my travels over the road, I realized that the greatest thing I could do with my life was to choose a career that would allow me to connect with people in a way that transcends the superficial, and perpetuates kindness in a world with much suffering; so when I went back to college.

“I decided to pursue nursing. Fortunately, I walked into a chemistry class and met the person who would become my greatest mentor, offering me research opportunities and suggesting that I might be capable of more than I had planned.”

She graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in physiological science and began medical school at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine at the age of 31.

Scientific bent

While she grew up watching Bill Nye the Science Guy on TV, Flores said her interest in medical science really started in college “with my first physiology class taught by an MD who was very passionate about the subject. It was the hardest subject I had ever taken but fascinating enough that I could spend hours reading my textbook cover to cover.”

At the University of Iowa medical school, she worked with dual-trained physicians in Iowa’s dedicated medical-psychiatric unit. “I was able to experience the expertise of physicians who can simultaneously treat medical and psychiatric conditions in one streamlined fashion. For me, this holistic practice is the pinnacle of medical care, and my experience there taught me to look beyond my patient’s body and see the person inside because so many of our barriers to better health start in the mind.” 

It was the diverse patient populations and disease pathologies, Flores said that made her want to do her residency in Las Vegas, where she plans to practice in primary care.

“I love everything about this city from the Rat Pack and Cirque du Soleil to the city’s ability to rally together in a time of need as was demonstrated after the mass shootings of 1 October. Vegas feels like home.” 

Her experience driving 18 wheelers — one study found that in 2017 about 6.2 percent of big rig truckers were women — not only has given her vivid memories but has also had an impact on how she thinks about the practice of medicine.

Flores said part of the time on the road was spent delivering dry goods, everything from printer paper to batteries and flat-screen TVs. When she drove a refrigerated truck, her load might consist of meat products one day, butter the next.

State to state

She fondly remembers the sight of the coast of the Northwest and its mountain ranges, the sunrises and sunsets of the Southwest. Not at all fondly does she remember the tornadoes in Oklahoma and the snowstorms in the Rockies. “Driving a truck can be a dangerous job. I remember a snowstorm on I-70 in Colorado where we had to pull over by the side of the road and wait all night until it stopped in the morning. I saw a lot of accidents but fortunately never had one.”

Safety, said the 5-foot 2-inch physician, was something she always had to be aware of. 

“You had to be vigilant as a female at a truck stop. “You're showering at a truck stop, sleeping in a parking lot where there’s mostly men. There’d be a knock on the truck door and you didn’t know why. Prostitutes looking for work were not uncommon.” 

The people she met on the road made impressions that she said she’ll never forget. “There was this older man I met at a truck stop in Louisiana. I remember him telling me how he lost everything in Hurricane Katrina and he had bad diabetes and an entire family depending on him. He looked so unwell. I always wonder what happened to him.” 

The food deserts and lack of exercise and sleep that are part of trucking also left a lasting impression. “It was hard to find vegetables and fruits. Subway was the best of that. It was hard to exercise. I remember trying to do laps around the truck but sometimes that was dangerous. I didn’t find it easy to sleep in the back of the truck and you always felt sleep-deprived.”

Flores says her experience in trucking has had a lot to do with her going into primary care.

Preventing Disease

“Many of the truck drivers I met over the road were middle-aged obese males with multiple comorbidities; many of whom smoked, drank energy drinks, or used illicit substances to stay awake and suffered, as we all did, from the same lack of healthy foods,” she said. “This experience continues to inspire me to educate my patients about chronic disease prevention. I want to help my patients take control of their health by making positive changes at home, so that they can avoid hospitalization.

“Managing chronic disease after it occurs is like holding your child’s hand as you attempt to walk them safely across the freeway; the odds of wellness are already significantly decreased. Preventative medicine shows patients how to build a walking bridge over the freeway by addressing root causes of disease before they progress.”