Zak Herbstreit is home after spending five days in the hospital due to a heart condition, according to his father, ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit.
Zak, a tight end at Ohio State, is facing a “three-to-four month” recovery, the elder Herbstreit said during an appearance on the “Pat McAfee Show” on Thursday.
“We had a setback with Zak, with his health, this past Friday,” Kirk said. “So really the last five or six days have been kind of a whirlwind of he’s been in the hospital with some issues with his heart, and we’ve just been trying to keep up with that.
“We brought him home yesterday, which is great, but it’s not like, 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. And 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. And this is like a three- or four-month kind of thing to kind of see how it recovers.
“So 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.”
Initially, Zak, a third-year Buckeyes walk-on who played in three games last season, was diagnosed with pneumonia, though an echocardiogram revealed his heart was the true source of discomfort.
Despite being in peak physical condition, Zak would have never known that he had issues with his heart without the EKG — and the elder Herbstreit believes that people should learn from his son’s experience.
“I really would encourage anybody who’s playing sports to just go a little more than just doing your normal physical,” Kirk said. “The echo is what you really need to discover some things that potentially can be scary. So we’re very fortunate that he got the echo and found some stuff.”
The outpouring of support for his family has helped Kirk get through the early stages of the ordeal.
“It’s easy to get caught up in how cynical the world is and how negative the world is,” he said. “And something like this happens, and I can’t even tell you how many people have reached out, and it’s impossible to reach out to everybody, back to them. But I’ve just been overwhelmed with how many people we’ve heard from.
“You can’t even imagine the amount of people that have reached out and are concerned about him. So yeah, to everybody that has reached out, we really appreciate that and feel that wholeheartedly.”
