If you had a medical emergency Monday in metro Chattanooga, Doris White was the best friend you never knew you had.
If your child was pulled unconscious from a swimming pool, if your dad fell to the ground with a stroke, if you and your family were trapped inside a twisted auto wreck on Interstate 75 and you needed to get to the hospital quickly, via medical helicopter, White was on the job, getting you to the emergency room as fast as possible.
Monday was hectic. “We had 11 cases in 12 hours,” White said. There was a stroke, a heart attack, someone having trouble breathing, a child in an accident and trauma, trauma and more trauma, accidents all over the place from Athens, Franklin and Winchester in Tennessee to Hiawassee, Chatsworth and Blue Ridge in Georgia, and Murphy, N.C.
“You go from zero to 60 in the blink of an eye,” White said Tuesday.
White is one of about 30 staffers who run Erlanger’s Operations Center, which opened in February, coordinating medical helicopters and ambulances across much of Southeast Tennessee.