Support Jason Zhou's Recovery and Business

Anyone who knows Jason Zhou knows he’s a ridiculously hard worker. He’s put so much into his business over the years, watching him lay in that hospital for 11 days now, unable to check on his store or do any work, is truly heartbreaking.

Most of you know how this has gone over the last couple of months, but I wanted to give a quick timeline of where we started and where we are.

In May, on a Wednesday night almost midnight, Jason was in pretty severe stomach pain so he asked me to take him to the ER. He stayed a few hours, was told stomach inflammation, and was sent home work pain medication. By Friday morning, he was at work, I was there watching him, and he looked really bad and his stomach was still in pain. I told him we had to go back. They did lots of testing and decided after multiple tests, it was the gall bladder. They went in laparoscopicly but when they got in there, he was so inflamed and there was a lot of pus, thru and to abort the laparoscopic surgery and open him up fully, breastbone to groin area. After the surgery, a drain was placed but it was draining a lot so they went back in to add a stint to help with drainage. He did ok, lost a ton of weight, but was fully determined to attend his son’s high school graduation. He got out the following Thursday and attended graduation that Saturday.

He still had the drain in place so we went weekly to have it checked. We did that for 5 weeks.

On his 5 week appt, they decided the drain was ready to come out, so they pulled it out. Literally within one minute of the drain coming out, he was screaming and pouring sweat from the pain. Heart rate has skyrocketed. The dr’s office is at Memorial so they rushed him to the ER. That was around 3pm Wednesday. They gave him pain medicine and ran CT scans. Could not find what the source was. They admitted him bc the pain was so horrific. He stayed wed night and thur night and on Friday morning, his blood pressure dropped, he could barely talk and HE WAS SEPTIC!!!!!! All that time there, knowing he had recently had gallbladder surgery and no one could tell he was becoming septic?!

anyway, they had to take him for ANOTHER surgery. Open him back up AGAIN. And at the time they were thinking his intestines were probably dead. Got into surgery and cannot see anything wrong with his organs, which is great, but they know there’s a bile leak. unfortunately they couldn’t determine where it was. So they left him OPEN, put him on a ventilator where he stayed for 5 days.

he came off the vent on Tuesday and they decided 4 hours after to feed him fried chicken breast, mashed potatoes and gravy and chocolate cake. CLEARLY not ready for that so the next day he started to throw up so they had to intubate him!!! REALLY AWFUL to have done when you’re awake.

the tube has to stay in for 2 days, which of course at that time he’s not receiving any nutrition so now he’s on TPN, which I’ve heard is anywhere form $1500 to $5000 a day.

presently, he’s mostly coherent and aware but he’s super weak and in and out of sleep, mostly out, can’t really talk, between his throat being so sore and his lack of nutrition, it’s just so awful to witness. I have been at the hospital non-stop, ICU doesn’t allow overnight, but I do stay until they kick me out and I’m there as soon as they open.

Jason has worked his whole life to be successful and this is really going to hurt him, both physically and financially.

I did get permission from him to start this go fund me bc even at this point, we can already see the effects it’s had on the business and he’s still got a very long way to go. Anyone who would like to contribute, it will do directly to either his medical bills or to help keep the store afloat until he can get back to work and do what he does and loves the most.

if you’d like to and can help, great, but if not, positive thoughts and prayers are absolutely welcome as well.