GET WELL ZACH!
To All Fan Members Please Pray For Zach And His Family……

Special Bulletin To All Fan Club Members:

Below is an update on Zach, from his mother Tamara.
Our #1 Fan Club Member has been going through some rough times again.
Please join me and my family in sending out prayers for Zach and his family in their time of needs.
I will continue to send you updates as I receive them for his mother.

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Back in the Hospital
Posted Saturday, April 25^th

I knew yesterday was going to be a long day as soon as Zach got in the car and said "hey mom, I think my teeth are bleeding cause there was blood on my pillow when I woke up" Sure enough we got to clinic and his plates. (What makes your blood clot... normal is over 150, you get transfused below 30 and anything below 10 you are only allowed to breathe until your transfused) Zach was 7!!!! Really! His hemoglobin was only 6.9 normal is 13 so he also needed blood. He is also breaking out in the mouth sores again so we know his GVHD is trying to flare up again. We increased his steroids to try to buy him enough time to get to Seattle.....Good news between Dr Hall. and Zach’s friend Peter J. we are finally going to be seen by one of the founding docs. of ped. bone marrow trans. Dr H has already been talking with her and it looks like we will be starting the photo pher(I have no idea how to sp this) its when they take all Zach’s blood out and run it under a light to kill the T-cells and then put it back in. Zach would do this 2 days a week every other week for 6 to 9 months. Zach is not happy about this because they have to put a big shunt in and he wants to swim this summer. In the pool is the only place Zach can be that he is just like everyone else and he loved that last summer. He was crying and asked if we could at least wait till after his party in July, but he really can’t wait because his GVHD is becoming harder to keep in control. It breaks my heart because he doesn’t ask for much and I cant even give him this.
Right now I am scared to death since this last hosp. stay Zach has not regained the ground he lost and as we saw yesterday with his counts we are losing ground with his graft. I am terrified we will in time lose this battle, I cannot picture a future without him in it, I have always been the one who thought he would find the answers to how to treat this but I am feeling less sure by the day, keep him in your thoughts and prayers I need him here with me. We need him here with us.

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Update on Zach….
Posted March 5, 2009

It has been slow going on Zach’s recovery, he is taking much longer this time to bounce back after his hospital stay. He is going to schools half days and is back to using his power wheel chair because he lacks the strength to use his push. His spirits are high though you would never know he is struggling. That’s our Zach!

I have a few dates for you all to keep an eye out for. March 21 at 4:00 will be our book signing at the Lehigh Valley Barnes & Noble Zach and I will both be signing our book chicken soup for the soul the cancer book
April 3 Zach will be in Seattle Wash. Part of his trip will be to see some docs at Seattle children’s hosp. but the main part is that Zach is being awarded a national award for the YES I CAN! award for the Council for Exceptional Children it is recognized by the president of the united states. This is a HUGE award and Mr. Fulmer and Mrs. Shirk are the two teachers who did all the painstaking work to submit Zach for this award they will also be going out with us to see Zach receive it.
May 3 is Zach yearly golf outing held by his friend Bob Toth at the Iron Lakes golf club. This year Zach will be splitting his share with Dawn Brays family Dawn is a teacher at Ironton elem. whose daughter had a AVM at school and is still recovering, Dawn is not able to work at this time so Zach wanted to do something to help the Bray family out.
That’s all for now I will keep you posted as new dates arrive.

Any questions or comments please give me a call at 610-261-4957 or 484-347-8331.

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Great NEWS from Tamara Kraus
Posted Jan 19, 2009 1:03pm

We are going home! we are checking out today!!! Thanks to all of you out there for your love and support during this time, we could not have done it all without you.

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Turn for the worse
Posted 4 minutes ago

I was hoping after last night Zach was making some improvements. Then I saw Dr. Halligan this morning and he told me Zach’s chest x-ray this morning is as he put it "really bad, really bad" it seems that the GVHD has taken over his lungs they are going to give him a really big dose of steroids and start back up every rejection drug he was on before, but the next few days he said are going to get bad he will most likely go to the ICU and be put on the vent. Right now they are just increasing his bi-pap settings to stay ahead.
I have already had my good cry this morning and I spoke with Zach (he asked why he wasn’t going back upstairs today) we have always had a pact that he would do whatever we asked him to and I would always tell him the truth, so far it has worked for us. I told him that although he is really sick we have been here before and we ALWAYS come out the winner and I have no doubts we will do the same. (in truth I'm terrified!) Please keep him in your thoughts the next few days he is here now because of each one of you!

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Update on Zach

On Tuesday afternoon I had a visit from Zach’s father Rich and his sister Tori. They came to my store with a Christmas gift from Zach.
Zach asked them to bring to me and my family. It was the best Christmas present that my family and I could have ever gotten.
Here is a young man who is having the battle of his life and is in tremendous pain and he took the time to make sure that his father and sister got that gift to us
Zach, has inspired so many people in his life that I can’t start to list them. I guess that’s why so many people including my family and myself and my other family the Lehigh Valley Yankee Fan Club have been so attached to him and his family . They are a one of a kind family.
I presented a gift to Rich to take back to Zach and I also sent 2 big crates of snacks filled with goodies for the family to take back to the hospital.
After speaking with Rich and getting an update from him I could see in his eyes that things weren’t going well with Zach. So I went to work to try to uplift Zach and the family.
I made a call to Ray Negron of the New York Yankees and asked him if he could get someone from the Yankees to call St. Christopher’s to speak to Zach. I thought that maybe this would help Zach and his family’s spirits.
Then around 9:45 pm I got the call I was waiting for. Rich, Zach’s father called me and said Chuck, your not gonna believe who just called Zach. I knew it was someone from the Yankees but who was it….
He said to me that it was Joba Chamberlin, Joba called and talked to Zach briefly (Zach was very tired) he talked to Tamara, Zach’s mother. She said Joba was very nice to them, asked Zach to stay strong and don’t give up the battle.
I called Ray and thanked him for pulling this off and he told me that Joba was on a plane and got off to make the call to Zach . He’s not only a great pitcher but also a great person…
Here is the latest updates for you…

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Another night
Posted 10 hours ago

Zach is still having some trouble with his O2 status. He has been switched over to the hosp. bi-pap and they have slowly had to increase his O2 settings on that he is now at 70%. He really wants to get back upstairs and at times he seems better than his been since his admission, but this new turn of events does give us some concern. They decided to keep him downstairs another night, hopefully tom. we will be able to go back up. He is going to have some tests done tom..CT-scan, echo, I'm not sure if there are more. I am hoping for an uneventful night I headed over to the Ronald McDonald house a little earlier tonight since I did not get any sleep last night, and Zach is out cold it also helps that his nurse is one that had him back in 2003 right before his big ICU stay so I know he is being taken care of.
On a different note if any of you belong to churches or clubs or org. the Ronald McDonald house has a lot of days they could use dinners cooked for Dinners here are done by volunteers that come in and prepare meals for the families that are staying here to give them a small break from the hospital and more importantly the hospitals food!!! This house has 17 rooms but are not always filled it is right behind St. Christopher’s parking garage. Just food for thought

Moved to SCU
Posted 22 hours ago

Zach started having trouble with his O2 sates at around 11pm last night. He dropped into the low 80s-high 70s so they called up the ICU team and did a stat chest x-ray, it wasn’t much different than his last one so they added 6 liters of O2 to his bi-pap machine he did well for about an hour then started dropping again so they bumped him up to 10 liters. At around 3am they decided it would be better to move him down to SCU and put him on hospital bi-pap he seemed to do better he would only drop if his mask wasn’t tight enough. He was a little upset about going down I think mentally it is always scary for the kids ,but he does look much better now. I am hoping that we only have to stay down for the day and get to go back upstairs very soon. His counts have come up a little more but so has the pain yesterday was brutal pain wise it was one of the few times he has actually screamed in pain to make it stop. Gail was a great nurse and really did everything she could to make him comfortable that meant a lot, its times like those that you are so glad to be back in the unit. Thanks to the Dunnes and Bostik family and to Barry and a big thanks to our CCI buddy who came with their dog Horace to visit to bad Adair wasn’t here to see him. I will keep you all posted I have a feeling today is going to be crazy and I have only had 3 hours sleep!

Going up
Posted Jan 3, 2009 7:02am

Although yesterday was a painful day for Zach (horrible bone pain) it was actually very good news, it was telling us his marrow is trying to make cells(which is really painful) so we just kept him knocked out most of the day. He should get some relief in 3-4 days as his counts come up. The next big step is to make sure we time adding back in his rejection drugs at the right time. To early and we lose the new cells to late and his GVHD will get out of control and then we lose the cells because we have to attack the GVHD. Cross your fingers that we time this right.

Rough night
Posted Jan 2, 2009 9:00am

Zach seemed to do better yesterday but he was up all night last night in pain we couldn't seem to get him comfortable no matter what we gave him. His white count is .08!!! so we are making some improvements his platelet’s were only 19 so he will be getting those again today. Thanks so much Grady and family for the meatballs after all that he ate......1!!! But he loved it. Thanks too for Kasey and mom driving 2 whole hours down here to visit with him. You spent more time driving than being in one place that was really nice of you. Also big thanks to the Lehigh Valley Yankee fan club, the kids and nurses loved your goodie basket!

They just took Zach down to the O.R. they are going to check his spinal fluid pressures again and also do a bone marrow biopsy. He is not doing so great at this moment. He is eating his platelets up as fast as we can give them to him which is causing him to have nose bleeds and also he started bleeding from his G-tube last night, he also is having a lot of fluid in his stomach it was so big last night that he was in a lot of pain they are going to do a C-T to try to find the cause of this. We are worried about our guy he is really sick right now so please keep him in your thoughts and also Tyler and Tori as they are having a hard time too. Thank you to all of the messages and offers of help once school starts back up if things are still not going well I will be reaching out to you all. We did have x-mas although Zach wont even remember it...Rich says we can just rewrap his gifts and give them to him on his birthday ...he will never know!!! I will update as we get results please say a prayer for our guy.

News on Monday
Posted 1 day ago - Dec. 29th 2008

Zach did well in the O.R his pressures were still up at 32 so they doubled his dose of diamox. He is still having problems with bleeding and with fluid in his stomach they did an ultra sound today to check his liver and thankfully there were no problems there. When he woke up this morning it looked like he had wet the bed (which he never does!) but we soon saw that he was really leaking from his bone marrow puncture site it had filled his whole bed! So that is still a concern that he is eating up his platelet’s so fast, he got two units of blood today they held his platelets so they wouldn’t overload him. They had wanted to get the photo pheresis started but he wont be able to until he can maintain his counts. We should have some results from his bone marrow on Monday, from what Halligan saw his bone marrow is very sick and he didn’t see any cells to make platelet’s hopefully we will get some answers. He also will get another Cat scan and another spinal tap most likely on Monday too.
Thank you so much to all they people who have left messages that have been following Zach’s care page but never knew him it is very touching to see all of the people Zach has touched.
Thanks too, to all the visitors who have come up it has meant a lot to us. I will most likely wait to post again till Monday. He did look much better to us today and even stayed awake for his visitors.

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Over Night Stay

November 10, 2008
Posted 21 hours ago

Zach was having some trouble Thursday night (he gained 4lbs of fluid in 24 hours) so the big guy told us to come down Friday to be admitted. He got a big dose of meds to move the fluid off and they started him on antibiotics for his lung cultures (strep and something else grew out) but they think these are just secondary and not the problem.

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Nobody knows:

November 7, 2008
Posted 18 hours ago

It was another long day; first we had to leave the house at 5:00am (even the dog still wanted to sleep!)to be at the hospital at 7:00. Then the idea was that Dr Tauber was going to try to get a better tissue sample of his lung this time since nothing grew out on his last one. But of course nothing is ever easy, whatever is going on in there has caused such inflammation that just suctioning him caused his lungs to bleed so no one felt comfortable with taking tissue. She did get more plaque and sent the breathing tube down to be cultured since there was a lot of what seemed like pus around it. But as of now nothing is growing out which made for a very long frustrating day. Zach still continues to be air hungry and has more edema, no one is sure why. Sometime today Dr. Tauber is supposed to call to tell us what our plan of action will be. Two things were discussed one would be to go to surgery and actually cut in and remove a piece of lung tissue, this requires a chest tube and a short stay in the ICU Halligan is not fond of this plan. The second plan is to start him on big dose steroids to treat what they think may be GVHD causing all of these problems NO ONE is fond of this plan, since steroids really throw Zach into a tail spin and have already done so much damage. The best news would be if something does grow out on these cultures and we can treat that. I will keep you all posted.
I feel so bad for Zach , he has gotten to such a great place in his life he has such good friends Alli, Lauren , Grady, Kasey, Erin, & Megan he was really having such a great year last year but just when things are finally going OK something has to come along to knock him on his butt! And for some reason I am uncomfortable with how he is right now its just making me nervous. I don’t understand why he has been hit by so many different factors in such a short time. I am sure its just lack of sleep that has me ranting on but just keep him in your prayers its always worked before!
Special thanks to Steph Shirk and Mr. Fulmer for taking such great care of our Tori girl she’s still smiling from ear to ear!

Our club members have embraced Zach and his family members and have  seen the struggles that everyone has experienced with Zach's illness.  Upon learning that the treatments that would be necessary to help Zach continue his battle would not be covered by insurance because they are considered experimental, our members became very concerned.

One member, Shelly Alexander, took it upon herself to find a way to assist this family in their time of financial need. She asked the board of directors to allow her to organize a benefit dinner dance to raise some much needed funds. With the approval given, she worked feverishly to secure a hall, deejay and last but not least, a committee of people to help her bring everything together.

The benefit was held in the Cementon Playground Social Hall with a sold out crowd of 235 attendees who enjoyed a delicious Italian gourmet dinner and great dancing music. The Kraus family was also in attendance to enjoy a night out together. A very touching memory of the evening was when Zach and his mother, Tamara had a spotlight moment on the dance floor. A Chinese auction and silent auction were also held. There were many donations made by individuals, companies and other groups which helped to raise $10, 350.00 for Zach and his family. The final calculations will be made available at the meeting.

The LVYFC would like to commend the Dancing for Zach committee for making this a huge success. A special thank you to Shelly Alexander and Wendy Luberti for ther tireless commitment to the cause and hitting a home run for Zach and the Kraus family. A really big thank you to all who contributed to the affair by helping to plan the benefit, sell tickets, contribute funds, donated prizes for the Chinese auction, provided baked goods and other items but most of all we would like to thank those those who attended. Your support of the members who worked feverishly to organize it was really appreciated.

A special thank you to those who took the time to help set up the tables and chairs, unload everything that was brought to the hall and help with all the other chores. We also appreciate all those who stayed to tear down the tables and chairs and loaded things that had to be taken out. We hope that everyone involved in whatever way will feel good that they have enriched this family not only by providing them with a financial contribution but most of all by letting them know we care about them. We also ask that you keep this family in your thoughts and prayers as they continue their journey toward Zach's good health.

Thank you to everyone!