Volunteers supply needs for sick people with no other options at Ooltewah High School

photo Patients wait on risers as dentists, hygienists,and dental students work on patients in a makeshift dental clinic set up in the Ooltewah High School gymnasium Saturday by Remote Area Medical. The two-day clinic offers free medical, dental and vision services to uninsured or underinsured patients.
photo Dr. Mark Swanson performs an eye exam on Mary Welch at the Remote Area Medical clinic at Ooltewah High School.
photo Dr. Paul McCord performs a dental procedure on Kevin Moore at the RAM clinic.

The cars were already lining up on the road around Ooltewah High School around 6 p.m. Friday, and the line only grew as the sun went down.

Their license plates were from counties across the tri-state region: Rhea. Davidson. Whitfield. Blount. Murray.

Ashleigh Rogers, 31, was at the wheel of her Acura SUV. Her daughters, Sydney, 10, and Marleigh, 6, were in the back seat. They had packed the car with blankets, pillows, books and snacks, planning like the others in line to spend the night in the parking lot.

They did not want to miss their chance to be among the hundreds to get free dental, vision and medical care offered Saturday and today by the Knoxville-based Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps.

Sydney has needed glasses for a long time. Marleigh needed a checkup. And Rogers was overdue for some dental work.

She works part time and has no insurance, and she has had trouble getting the girls signed up for TennCare this year.

The family only recently moved to Chattanooga, living in transitional housing with a local ministry since they lost their house to fire and flood damage.

"We've just had a really hard time since moving to the area, but we're making it," Rogers explained, smiling at her girls.

Its for people like her and more than 700 others who came to the school that Remote Area Medical, or RAM, organizes its massive traveling health clinics throughout the country.

The organization recruits hundreds of doctors and dentists, who donate their time. Many are local, but others come from any of 28 states.

Most of those at Saturday's clinic had no access to coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Many would qualify for Medicaid under the law's expanded provisions, but Tennessee and Georgia have not expanded their programs. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has said he hopes to present a plan for Medicaid expansion this fall.

Around midnight, the school parking lot was jammed with cars. Those waiting played cards, smoked and read to pass the time.

Debora Brock, 52, tried to sleep but could not. She has multiple sclerosis and was there with her brother to get his teeth pulled.

"You have to be patient, but it is worth it," she said. "Especially when you are choosing between buying food and buying medicine."

At 3 a.m., people began emerging from their cars in the chill air, as a man with a loudspeaker began handing out numbers. The doctors and volunteers trickled in to put the final touches on the school-turned-clinic.

There were 54 dental chairs lined up in the Ooltewah Owls' gym. School desks had been turned around to create triage stations, and classrooms became examination rooms.

The doors opened just a few minutes before 6 a.m., and the long line finally began filing inside.

There was triage. For every person who has gone five years without a dental visit, someone has gone two decades. Dozens have left bad eyesight untreated most of their lives.

"It's been forever," said Henry Donahue, 68, before being fitted for a new pair of brown-framed spectacles.

The event provides an average of $500 in care per person, said Billy Edmonds, RAM's chief development officer.

"Everyone gets in a situation in their life where they need help, where they need a hand," he said. "This could be any of our mothers, sisters, family. They're us."

In the gym, hundreds of people sat tightly together, lined up on the red bleachers. Many had wheelchairs, walkers, canes and braces.

All day, the gym buzzed with the sounds of dental tools as hundreds of teeth were pulled, filled and fixed.

•••

In the mid-afternoon, U.S. Sen. Bob Corker arrived to tour the clinic.

Two weeks earlier, RAM founder Stan Brock had come to his office to ask for help with one of the clinic's main problems.

Tennessee is one of the few states that allow doctors from other states to volunteer for such events. Most states don't allow it, which makes the volunteer pool much harder to draw from.

Corker has been supportive of creating a federal law that could make more volunteer crossover possible.

He has been much less supportive of the Affordable Care Act. Though he said that the huge crowd at the clinic showed that "we have a lot to overcome here in our country still," he also said that it shows the new law "is still not matching up with people's needs."

"There are a lot of problems - huge problems - with the way the bill was put together," he said. "But I think there are people on both sides of the aisle that acknowledge there are difficult and huge problems with [health care], but we want to figure out a way to move ahead."

He said if Republicans take the Senate in the November elections, "We will be very charged with that, I think."

Corker wouldn't talk about Medicaid expansion, saying it was a state decision, but said he had talked with federal health officials about Haslam's so-called "Tennessee Plan."

Edmonds said his hope for Corker's visit is the same hope he has when any politicians visit the gyms flooded with people needing help:

"That they continue to remember the real needs in their communities, and why they were sent to Washington, to bring real change and help," he said.

By early afternoon the bleachers had thinned out, but dozens of bleary-eyed people still waited for their turn. Some dozed with their heads in their hands.

Rogers found out that her dental care could not be done at the clinic. But one dentist told her to come back to his office and he would take care of it.

"I was just in tears," she said as the family walked back to their car. "What they do here is such an incredible blessing."

To get Sydney's eyes checked, the family waited in a dark, cavernous JROTC room lit only by the lamps of optometrists. Marleigh fell asleep in a chair next to her mother.

When it was Sydney's turn, she sat in the chair of Dr. Brian Lantman, a Chattanooga optometrist who has been doing RAM for 13 years. He found signs of severe farsightedness, which would take multiple prescriptions of glasses to correct. He told her to come to his office in six weeks, no charge.

Within the next hour or so, Sydney was fitted with a new pair of red-framed, cat-eye prescription glasses. She smiled and squinted as she walked out into the sunlight.

"That is the reason I am here today," said Lantman, pointing after the Rogers family. "That right there."

Contact staff writer Kate Harrison Belz at kbelz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6673.

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