Updates

Doctors performed a bronchial lavage, where they go into thru his trach and use saline or some other fluid to pull out his sputum and test it for infection (which all came back negative). They were pleasantly surprised to find his sputum was very clean. Zach has kicked all his infections and his pneumonia is getting better every day. The nurses told Anna that he did not like the bronchial lavage. He kept coughing and trying to sit up, making it very clear to the team he was uncomfortable. He was given sedatives to complete the lavage, but it's great that he is reacting so much.

He had a fever the other day (Anna thinks it's because his nurse Katy wasn't there -- he loves nurse Katy) but they are just giving him Tylenol and using some ice to cool him down. When first admitted, Zach's fever would shoot up to 105 in a few minutes if taken off the cooling machine, and now he's going all day without having a fever. Go Zach!

Looking back, he's made significant progress in terms of getting healthy. Soon he will be out of critical condition and working on waking up and healing his mind. Stay optimistic and keep praying for him to wake up!

It's been a few days since I've updated this site and I love writing good news. Zach is doing wonderful. His first great day was Friday where he didn't have a fever all day. He's infection free, the pneumonia is improving significantly, and he didn't need the ventilator while he was sleeping at night. He's been like this all weekend, so let's hope this continues.

Doctors want to give Zach a spinal tap to make sure the pressure in his brain is ok. This is probably his last week at Hopkins before moving to a rehab center, so doctors want to be 100% sure that everything is stable with Zach before he leaves. What a great team of specialists!

On Sunday, Zach was moving around a lot; lifting his head, arms and legs stretching, and making his famous Elvis lip. When I came the room I said, 'Zach, it's your buddy, wake up for me.' No lie, he started to open his eyes. Needless to say, I was ecstatic! Anna got there a few minutes later, a little stinky from not showering all day**, and said she would be pissed if he woke up to me and not her. But truth be told, he most likely was just trying to wake up to tell me to stop touching his hand and to go get Anna.

**Zach: Dude, seriously, when you're not awake to tell Anna to shower, she doesn't.

I've selfishly included a picture of me and Zach (don't yell at me, Anna told me to). I miss our email conversations at work, our shared bitching about Baltimore drivers, and his amazing ability to be one of the coolest obsessive compulsive guys I know. It makes me so angry sometimes when I sit and think about what's happened to my good friend, for no good reason. But I'm so thankful for all of his friends and family that I've gotten to know because of Zach. And I can't wait for the day to celebrate and be happy with him again. I know YOU (the website visitor) miss him, too. If you have a story and a picture you'd like me to post about you and Zach, please email me and I'll post it word for word.

This is an email from Anna. I couldn't change a thing because she said it perfectly; Zach had a fantastic day!

'The best thing that happened today was that Zach 'localized' for the doctors, meaning that when they stimulated (hurt) him, he brought his arms/hands up to where they were stimulating (hurting) him. This is a huge step neurologically!! Before, he would just move his arms inward a little to show that he felt pain but never touched where it was. So now he's showing that his brain is thinking at the higher level. The nurses and doctors were very excited, as were we. I'm so excited as I'm typing this.'

'Also, he opened his eyes more today when i visited him during the early visiting hours and i told him to keep them open until his mom came at 5 and he did! His eyes were not half way open but not just slits either. He had them slightly open and was blinking with them open. We all asked him to do simple stuff for us like squeeze our hand, stick out his tongue, wiggle his thumb and he did them all like 70% of the time. Not sure if they were all just coincidences but he squeezed my hand ever so slightly, as if to tell me he could hear but he was too tired to squeeze really hard. It was very bizarre and very encouraging! Kim and T-bird were super excited. They got there first and were the ones that told me about it. Also, the nurse, Katy, said that when I was doing range of motion to his legs, she said she saw that he was looking down at me. Katy agreed that he seemed a lot more focused today. She was excited that Zach localized for her. It was a nice good-bye present for her since Zach is probably moving floors tomorrow morning.'

'Taylor and I cleaned out Zach's room. It actually took us a while to move him out. He sure had a lot of stuff in that little room. It was bittersweet today because we had to say bye to our family of nurses, physicians, techs etc that we had grown with over the past 4 weeks but it is good that Zach is no longer in critical condition. We will never forget the love, care, respect and support that came from all the staff on Zach's unit. Staff members that didn't even have Zach as a patient would come into his room and say hello to us and tell us how they were very sorry and that they were pulling and praying for Zach's recovery. The whole family thanks the entire staff for Zach's care and for making us feel comforted and at ease during these painful few weeks.'

--Anna

Zach was transferred to Kernan Rehab Hospital on Friday. He seemed a bit more active but nothing as exciting as Monday when he was squeezing Anna's hand, stuck out his tongue and moved his thumb. He moves around and opens his eyes a bit but we still have to keep hoping and being positive that he will start emerging from his coma.

Kernan is a wonderful, very well known Hospital for their rehab and we are confident that Zach will do well there. We look forward to Zach getting good physical therapy and occupational therapy while at Kernan. At Hopkins they were more focused on getting him healthy, now Kernan can focus on waking him up! Also Zach will be able to see his dog Mia at Kernan.

Anna wrote me and said, 'I have gotten so many cards from friends, family and even people that don't personally know Zach or me. The support continues to be amazing, which is just unbelievable. I am so thankful for all of the cards, prayers, donations and positive thoughts from everyone. We need it all!','zach-and-gary.jpg

The arraignment for Zach's attackers will be July 18th at:

Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse
(WEST) 100 N. Calvert St.
Baltimore, MD 21202
Room 236

The room will be very small and will only last about 15 minutes at the most. The arraignment is supposed to be at 9:30 a.m. but they are all scheduled for that time so it's basically whenever they get to. At the arraignment, the defendants will plead 'not guilty' and the first trial date will be set.

Parking is tough; you'll have to park on the street. Click here for driving directions.

Zach was taken to the emergency room at Mt. Sinai Hospital yesterday evening around 10:30pm. Everything seemed fine the other day, but yesterday he was coughing a lot and started vomiting. Doctors at Kernan have him some medicine and he appeared to stabilize, but started to vomit again, this time more severely. They immediately took him to the ER at Mt. Sinai Hospital where he was given some antibiotics and other medication. His blood pressure started to decrease, but he had a fever and his heart rate was above normal.

Doctors said he had pneumonia again (which may be lingering from before), and he was very sick, possibly having multiple internal infections. They were running blood tests last night and should know more today about what's going on with his vitals and any infections he may have.

As soon as I hear from Anna I will update everyone with Zach's status. This is terribly upsetting after he has been making so much progress and getting so healthy. I hope that this is just a reaction to moving to a new facility and that these possible infections are minor.

Here's a link to Sinai Hospital.

Right now Zach is still in the ICU at Sinai. His vital signs aren't very good, and he is considered in critical condition again. That means his blood pressure is below normal and he is on a lot of blood pressure medication to keep him in a stable range. His renal function is worsening a little and his heart rate is increased. He's also got a fever which is probably from some sort of infection.

Doctors are taking pan-cultures and started him on a broad spectrum antibiotic for sepsis. They just need to see how he improves and wait for the results of the cultures.Zach has some fluid in the left side of his lungs, which may be new pneumonia, residuals from the last pneumonia, or simply just some fluid. They are going to do CAT of his lungs and stomach to find out more.

Also, Zach is on full vent support while he's in critical condition. This is a precaution and it's best for the machine to do the work while his body is focused healing.

I wish I had better news; hopefully the pan-cultures can identify the problem and a simple antibiotic can be given to Zach to heal quickly. Zach, you've come so far and I know you're fighting!

Zach has gotten a little bit better from when he was first brought to Sinai's ER on Sunday night. His kidneys are working and he is having normal urine output (this is great!!). The urologist thinks his infection, or one of his infections, may be in his urinary tract. He had a blood transfusion two nights ago that brought his blood levels back up to normal (this is great as well!!). He was supposed to get a colonoscopy yesterday morning but as they were prepping him, he started vomiting and aspirated.

I seems like the internal bleeding in his intestinal tract may have gotten better because there is almost no blood coming out of him so he doesn't need another blood transfusion today.

Doctors weren't able to wean him off one of his pressers (medicine that increases his blood pressure) and they ended up changing him to two different pressers yesterday. Getting him off the pressers is the most important issue right now. The good news is that they were able to lower one of his pressers a little bit throughout the day yesterday and he is now only on two pressers instead of three.

The good news is that Zach was weaned off all his pressers and he is very stable. All vitals are back where they should be, which is very encouraging. His left lung looks a lot better because they performed a procedure that drained out quite a bit of fluid. Also, all of his cultures came back negative, which means he doesn't have any sort of bacterial infection (at least not yet). So, he has problems internally somewhere.

Doctors gave Zach a HIDA scan done today to follow up from the belly CT yesterday. The belly CT showed possible inflammation of the gallbladder but they wanted to confirm that with the HIDA scan. Doctors still don't know what is wrong with his gallbladder, if there is even something wrong. We basically don't know why he is even sick. The team is still trying to isolate the cause. He was also given two more units of blood today. So, clinically, he is doing better.

The neurologist came by today to check out Zach because his lower lips quiver a lot. He's going to report back if there is any seizure activity, but suspects it's from being sick. Also there are some cuts on his lips, and the infectious disease doctors will be by tomorrow to make sure all the open cuts are OK and not a sign of anything bad.

The scary news is that his toes are starting to turn black and blue because his circulation isn't good and they think he developed a condition called disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), where your body kind of bleeds and clots at the same time. The vascular surgeons said there is nothing they can do because he still has a pulse in both feet so Podiatry needs to keep an eye on his feet. The vascular surgeon did say that although they look very bad, there is still a chance that his blood flow can get better, thus his toes will get better as well.

The pressers, blood pressure medicine that keeps pressure up, are thought to be the cause of his toes not getting enough blood. Pressers cause the vessels to constrict which increases blood pressure but with the toes being so far from his heart and his vessels so constricted, his toes lost some blood flow.

Kim, Zach's mom, is asking for a special request - that everyone continue to pray for Zach's health as well as pray for his toes since the surgeon told us not to lose hope in his toes getting better.

'What's going on? Where the hell are the updates!?' Sorry, I took a short trip and didn't have access to a computer, but I'm back and ready to report!

First some great news that Anna just sent to me in a txt message. She wrote and said Zach’s toes are looking so much better! That’s a real blessing and I’m so excited to read that.

Last Friday Zach was transferred back to Hopkins to the ICU, where he was greeted by all the wonderful doctors and nurses that have gotten to know Zach so well. There were also quite a few out of town visitors, including his sister and good friends Bryan and Jason. It was great to see you guys and know that Zach could hear you giving him encouragement.

When Zach got to Hopkins his eyes were wide open and Nurse Katy said he seemed very alert. When Anna and Ashley got there his eyes were closed, but opened once they started to rub his arm and started talking to him. He would repeat this all day when his name was called very loudly, which is very encouraging!

Besides looking a little puffy from all the fluids, he looks great! Randy from Simas Salon came in and gave him a nice styled hair cut for free, so no more half mullet thing going on. Thanks Randy! He has been given medication to flush all the fluids out himself. Doctor's still are puzzled as to why he was sick, but said he falls in the 5-10% of people that get sepsis without knowing the exact cause. His white blood cell count was a little high, which indicates some type of infection somewhere, but so far all tests have returned negative. Hopefully the body is working out the infection on its own.

His stomach and head CAT scan showed nothing abnormal. Doctors might go into his lung with a scope to see what's going on since that seems to be the only reason for the increased white blood cell count. So good news all around for Zach, and he will stay in the ICU at Hopkins until they are sure his vitals are back to normal and there is no sign of any possible infection.

Tomorrow is the arraignment for Zach's attackers. This will be a short process and is not the actual trial. Unfortunately it's scheduled for 9:30am, along with all the other arraignments, so it may be early, or may be later in the day.

Anna was interviewed by ABC 2 News and WJZ. Go watch the interview here. They also talk about the Neighbors' Night Out, and the list of participating restaurants and bars is now up and being updated daily.

Sorry again for the long delay with the updates, Anna said I can't go away again without making sure I have a solid internet connection! Thanks again for everyone's love and support.