Kirk Herbstreit provides update on son Zak, now discharged from hospital
COLUMBUS — Ohio State junior tight end Zak Herbstreit has been discharged from the university’s Wexner Medical Center, according to his father Kirk Herbstreit, a former Buckeyes quarterback and current ESPN analyst who provided an update on the Pat McAfee Show Thursday.
“We had a setback with Zak with his health this past Friday,” Kirk said. “Really the last five or six days have been kind of a whirlwind — he’s been in the hospital with some issues with his heart. And we’ve just been trying to kind of keep up with that. We brought him home yesterday, which was great, but … normally you get out of the hospital, and you’re cured and everything’s good. He’s in good spirits, he’s home with us where his mom can take really good care of him. This is just going to be a long process to kind of see how his heart responds to some of the medications that he’s on.
“This is like a three or four-month kind of thing to kind of see how it recovers.”
Kirk explained that, initially, doctors diagnosed Zak with pneumonia and thought he had fluid in his lungs. But, after Zak received an echocardiogram — an ultrasound of the heart — they realized his heart was what was causing him difficulties, despite him exhibiting “very few symptoms.”
“You would never know that he was dealing with what he’s dealing with,” Kirk said, via the Pat McAfee Show. “We’re at the beginning of this. We’re going to be positive, and it’s a long haul, and he’s going to get better.”
Kirk added: “The key is being patient and positive. We just got back from a walk. Right before I came on with you guys, we took our dogs for a walk. But little walks — like down the street and back. Yeah, this came out of nowhere, man. It’s another example of — you guys being athletes, you understand this — you do a physical, it’s one thing, but you do an echocardiogram, and it really examines the heart. It’s more of an ultrasound on the heart. It checks the pressures of your heart. It checks the size of the heart. And, really, I talked to [Ohio State head coach] Ryan Day about it the other day. … I really would encourage anybody who is playing sports just to go a little bit more than doing your normal physical. Or even EKG wiring, that’s not really enough. The echo is really what you need to discover some things that potentially can be scary.”
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Zak is in his third season with the Buckeyes after playing his high school ball at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, Tennessee. He joined the program as a preferred walk-on ahead of the 2021 season.
The 6-foot-2, 240-pound tight end earned his first offensive snaps last season as a sophomore in late-game situations versus Toledo, Wisconsin and Rutgers. He also registered special teams snaps against Wisconsin, according to Pro Football Focus.
Kirk has four sons, and Zak is the first of the bunch to play at Ohio State, where not only Kirk played but also his father, Jim, played. Kirk was the program’s starting quarterback and co-captain in 1992, and Jim co-captained the 1960 Buckeyes.
