{"id":458125,"date":"2026-10-06T16:06:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/458125\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T16:06:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:06:08","slug":"houston-doctors-transplant-new-lungs-into-poisoned-football-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/458125\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston doctors transplant new lungs into poisoned football player"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zach Brown, a junior offensive lineman at Lake Cormorant High School, had been “critically ill” for weeks following an accidental exposure to\u00a0paraquat, a highly toxic herbicide. Brown was recently transferred from Le Bonheur in Memphis to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston for treatment, which included being placed on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), a machine that takes over the work of the heart and lungs,<\/p>\n

In a Facebook post on Oct. 2, Brown’s family stated that a match for a lung transplant had been found. On Monday, Casey Brown, Zach’s father, said the surgery was lengthy, but “went as well as expected.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

“A HUGE WIN FOR\u00a0ZACH!” said Casey Nester, the fundraiser’s organizer and wife of Lake Cormorant’s head football coach,\u00a0on GoFundMe<\/a>. “Yesterday was an incredibly long day. Zach\u2019s transplant surgery lasted many hours, but this morning, we are claiming a BIG win \u2014 his new lungs are in, and the heart stent has been removed!”<\/p>\n

Brown’s family has a $16,000 goal as they prepare for Brown’s rehabilitation and treatment back home in Mississippi. Recovery from a lung transplant usually takes months because organ rejection requires constant monitoring.<\/p>\n

“There is still a long road ahead,” Nester said in a statement on GoFundMe. “But today, we are celebrating this milestone and thanking God for answered prayers, the gift of organ donation, and the incredible medical teams who have fought alongside him.”<\/p>\n

Paraquat is considered one of the most dangerous weed killers still in use in the United States and has been banned in over 70 countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and China.<\/p>\n

According to the Center of Disease Control, no proven antidote or cure exists for\u00a0paraquat poisoning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zach Brown, a junior offensive lineman at Lake Cormorant High School, had been “critically ill” for weeks following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[90778,16469,1704,85744,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-458125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-chronhighschool","tag-chronsports","tag-chronstaff","tag-chrontexas","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}