Highly specialized care saves a young woman’s life

For most of us, a case of the flu is just unpleasant. For 26-year-old Martha Hotaling of Bushkill, it was nearly fatal. Stricken with major flu complications last January, she “coded” (stopped breathing) for a couple of minutes and had no measurable pulse. Fortunately, she was in the Lehigh Valley Hospital intensive care unit (ICU), under the watchful eye of tele-intensivist Matthew McCambridge, M.D.

McCambridge and his colleagues work from our new advanced ICU, a command center near Lehigh Valley Hospital—Cedar Crest that’s equipped with the most sophisticated technologies. Through remote-control cameras and other equipment, the team enhances our on-site critical-care staff at both Cedar Crest and Muhlenberg, ensuring 24-hour care.

During Hotaling’s first 12 hours of tele-intensivist care, she needed some 50 interventions—including heart catheterization, kidney dialysis and surgeries on her arms and legs to relieve deadly pressure. “At one point we didn’t know if they could save her heart,” says her mother, Martha Schikschneit (see the two, at right). But after five weeks in the hospital and rehabilitation to restore her strength, Hotaling was on the way to recovery. Today she’s back at work as a honeymoon concierge, and in October danced at her own wedding with husband Ken.

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