How Betsy Rothrock’s Colleagues Saved Her Life

Betsy Rothrock’s heart gave out one day when she was at work. She had just finished lunch in the café and was about to return to work as a receptionist in the radiology department at Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN). She hadn’t been feeling great that day and someone even commented she didn’t look well.

People later told her that right before she passed out, two people caught her.

Cardiologist Larry Jacobs, MD, happened to be in the café that day, along with Jessica Kramer, RN. Someone yelled they needed help “NOW!” The two ran over and very carefully rested Rothrock on the floor.

“We were a team that day, me and Jessica,” Dr. Jacobs says. “I feel fortunate that we happened to be there and could step up.”

Rothrock was unconscious and they couldn’t feel a pulse so they started CPR. Then, suddenly, she was awake and talking.

“We felt her body jolt and I knew it was her heart monitoring device going off,” Kramer says. “We could feel a pulse then and she immediately started talking. She said she had a defibrillator and was on the heart transplant list.”

Thankfully, Kramer has experience with defibrillators. As an RN in the electrophysiology lab, she works with devices every day to treat and monitor people with heart conditions. When Rothrock had no pulse one minute and suddenly sat up and was talking the next, Kramer knew her defibrillator had shocked her heart back into a normal rhythm.

Kramer sent for a cart from her office so they could scan Rothrock and see the history of what her defibrillator had recorded. By the time the ambulance arrived, they were able to tell them exactly what had transpired.

Rothrock received a helicopter ride to her heart specialists. Thanks to the defibrillator she was awake and alert for the entire trip. She even took photos and joked with the crew for much of the flight.

“I was dying to get out of work that day!” Rothrock jokes.

She has a particularly good sense of humor and can laugh about it now, but the truth is Rothrock and her family have had a lifetime of heartache. Her father died on his way to the emergency room with chest pain – he was just 34 years old. Her brother, Bruce, had a heart transplant and they know of several cousins who have also had transplants.

“I was relatively healthy, but with the issues in my family everyone kept telling me to get my heart checked,” Rothrock says. “When I finally did, I was diagnosed with Lamin A/C cardiomyopathies, a genetic disorder that can cause dilated cardiomyopathy, a variety of arrhythmias, conduction disorders and an increased risk for sudden death.”

Once diagnosed she began treatments to try to get her heart back into rhythm. “We tried ablations first and when that didn’t work, I went for monthly cardioversion. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working,” she says.

Before his transplant Rothrock’s brother had a defibrillator. She was aware of what he went through with it and how painful it could be at times. The idea of getting one didn’t excite her, but it was her next best option.

“I was already on the heart donor list at that time,” she says. “My doctor said my heart would probably last about a year.”

Almost a year to the day, on Christmas eve 2023, as she was planning her very last-minute holiday shopping and wrapping, Rothrock received the call – they had a heart for her. They told her to be there in four hours.

After a whirlwind few hours of preparing and getting to the hospital, Rothrock received her new heart the next morning on Christmas day. Everything went well, but over the next year she spent time in and out of the hospital with a few complications. She recalls that all she really wanted to do was to go back to work, sleep in her own bed and spend time with her cat, Callie.

After the transplant, with support from her family and colleagues, and her own perseverance, Rothrock got back on her own two feet without having to go to rehabilitation. While in the hospital she walked, practiced climbing up and down stairs and built up her strength enough that she could live independently, with Callie, of course.

“I work with the greatest group of people,” Rothrock says. “They supported me and donated their PTO time to me. To Dr. Jacobs and Jessica Kramer, and all my co-workers, I’m forever grateful for the awesome team at LVHN.”

When they sent someone to her home to ensure she could walk up and down stairs and take a shower on her own, Rothrock had already mastered both.

Her recovery continued to progress steadily and she was ecstatic to return to work recently. She even started going to the gym again. Callie has forgiven her for the time she was away in the hospital. She says both her and her brother have good and bad days, but they take them one day at a time.

One good thing that came out of all of this is a new understanding of what people she sees at work are going through and the uncertainty they might be feeling.

“People coming in for imaging are dealing with different illnesses than I did, but I understand their fear. I do my best to help them find their silver lining,” she says.