Women Who Shape The Plateau: Dr. Patti Wheeler

Written By: Luke Osteen | Issue: March 2023 | Photograph By: Susan Renfro

Brandy Letson and Dr. Patti Wheeler

For Dr. Patti Wheeler, bringing quality medical care to Plateau residents is simply a matter of embracing the limitations and possibilities inherent in small town life.

“When I arrived here 35 years ago, July 1988, Dr. John Baumrucker put me on call on my first day,” she says. “I didn’t have any patients scheduled that first week, but that first day we had seven people in the ER at one time. Pearl Lambert was the X-Ray technician –she thought it was a disaster even though it was a pair of accidents and she wanted to call everyone in. I told her I thought we could handle it – and we did, though she had to brush up on the C-Spine procedures.”

That introduction to the challenges of small town doctoring was a priceless lesson in being flexible and inventive.

“I was in the old dentist’s office across from the old Highlands-Cashiers Hospital (now the Peggy Crosby Center)  and the load was divided between me and Dr. Baumrucker and Dr. Heffington and my husband, (Dr.) Dave Wheeler,” she says. “Sometimes you’d have to take your own x-rays and read your own x-rays. I’m sure I’m a better clinician because I didn’t have a lot of help. Normally x-rays would go to Anderson twice a week and we’d bunch them up and carry them down the mountain. Dr. (Mark) Heffington’s dog would sleep in his truck and wander into the hospital when it got bored.”

Over the course of her 35 years of medical service, Dr. Patti (I don’t know anyone who calls her Dr. Wheeler) has treated and come to know entire generations of residents. “In all, I’ve cared for five generations of Highlanders – that builds a wonderful connection with your patients.”

Those decades of trust and service came back to her during the most painful portion of her life on the Plateau.

“When I was going through a terrible time in my marriage and everyone seemed to hear things about us, I wondered if a small town was the place for me. But looking back, that’s when I was supported the most by the community. My most difficult spot, that’s when people carried me.”

But her level of deeply personal care ensured that there would always be people in her corner, no matter the circumstances. 

“We just adore her, we absolutely love Patti,” says Highlands community pillar Geri Crowe, who with her husband Wayne has been a patient since the retirement of Dr. Baumrucker. “I can text her and she immediately responds – no matter what the situation. We couldn’t ask for another doctor. She’s not only a doctor, she’s also a friend. 

Let me corroborate Geri’s account with my own testament.

When my son was six, he developed a grave medical condition that required emergency surgery in Sylva in the middle of the night and the prospect of cancer treatment extending far into
the future. 

On the evening that Alex came back from Sylva, Dr. Patti showed up at our house to speak directly to him. Patti was straightforward with him, and patiently answered his questions, utilizing a family physician’s entire suite of knowledge delivered with a mother’s wisdom and compassion. It was an astonishing conversation, assuaging a little boy’s fears and allowing him to sleep in peace and providing his parents with  a measure of hope for the shadowed future. 

Imagine a physician stopping in to see her littlest patient after a long day’s work that’d stretched into the evening. House calls in the 21st century. Extraordinary.  

At the time, I told Dr. Patti that she was on the Side of the Angels. Nothing in the intervening years has caused me to doubt the assessment. I’ll fight you in the street over this. And a lot of Plateau residents will join me.