Little People, Big World’s Zach and Tori Roloff are opening up about his emergency brain surgery one year later.
The couple recalled dealing with the “near-death experience” during the Thursday, February 15, episode of their “Raising Heights” podcast, discussing the effect Zach’s health scare had on their family.
“It’s been a year since Zach almost died,” Tori, 32, shared, taking fans back to the day of the terrifying ordeal. “I get woken up that morning at 2 a.m., 4 a.m. and this nurse goes, ‘Your husband’s getting moved to ICU.’ I fled in a panic to [the] ICU. And when I got to you — Zach was there yelling my name and so I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, he’s dying, like, this is it. We need help right now.’”
She continued: “I was just preparing myself for the worst because I had no idea what was going on.”
Zach, 33, explained that he had a shunt in his brain since he was a child but he believed that he didn’t need it anymore once he was older. When he started to get occasional bad headaches, he finally went to the hospital.
“I really feel like with spinal stuff, fluids, shunts and of those issues, the brain, headache, the idea of a migraine… it’s hard to pinpoint sometimes,” Zach said. “We’re [coming] up on a year on that and I haven’t had a migraine since then.”
Zach remembers going to the ER to “get tested” before his surgery, noting that “they wouldn’t see anything” abnormal. Tori added that it “took this huge event” to discover the cause of his medical issues.
Tori shared a photo of Zach in his hospital bed via Instagram in February 2023, noting that it “wasn’t exactly how we saw our week going.” She added at the time, “Zachary had emergency shunt revision this morning. It’s been a scary 72 hours but he is doing well and recovering!!”
Tori thanked her friends and family for their support, along with the team of neurosurgeons. While she didn’t disclose what caused Zach to require the operation, she hoped the procedure would help in “relieving his migraines.”
“You’re a freaking bad ass, Zach. You just had brain surgery… and handled it like a rockstar. I’m so proud of you,” her message read.
The couple tied the knot in 2015 and share three children: Jackson, 6, Lilah Ray, 3, and Josiah Luke, 21 months. All three of the duo’s kids were born with achondroplasia — a form of dwarfism — which Zach also has. While Tori was by her husband’s side in the hospital, she revealed in her February 2023 Instagram upload that her mother-in-law, Amy Roloff, was “holding down the fort” with the little ones at home.
Zach and his wife previously kept their fans in the loop via social media as Jackson underwent surgery to correct the bowing in his legs. One year after the November 2021 procedure, Zach shared an update on how his son was healing.
“It’s tough because the screws in his legs help straighten the leg as he grows,” Zach wrote via Instagram after a fan asked about Jackson’s recovery. “For him he maybe grows a inch a year, so it’s tough to see and won’t be obvious for a while.”
