Last year, Zach underwent emergency surgery that caused him to have a shunt in his brain replaced.
Tori and Zach Roloff are getting candid about the Little People, Big World star's near-death experience.
In February 2023, Zach had an emergency surgery to repair a shunt in his brain. On Wednesday's episode of their Raising Heights podcast, the couple reflected on the "scary" shunt revision surgery.
"It's been a year since Zach almost died," Tori shares. "We're gonna talk about it today, talk about a near-death experience that happened in the Roloff household."
The pair shared that they wanted to speak about the incident to bring awareness and encouragement.
Zach explained that he had the shunt -- which is a device that goes into his head and drains fluid into his stomach -- implanted when he was an infant, and had it revised at 13. The pair explained that they believed that Zach wasn't dependent on it.
However, Zach revealed that he was suffering with chronic and life-altering migraines for the last seven years, that they couldn't figure out what was causing them. Tori believed she always knew it was the shunt.
"We would go the ER and I would get tested and they wouldn't see anything," Zach says. "We just settled on ... I was having these episodes and sometimes a nap would help."
"It took this huge event of everything kind of falling apart for us to finally figure out what it was," Tori says.
Tori shared that Zach would "downplay" his symptoms whenever they spoke to the doctors and encouraged him to speak up about what he was going through. But all of the blood tests, scans all came back clear. Which made Tori scared.
"I was just preparing myself for the worst," she says. "Because I had no idea what was going on."
Tori and Zach revealed that the height of his illness began the day after she welcomed their third child, Josiah, and she was overwhelmed with stress. In her frustration, she revealed that Zach made a 45-minute drive to the hospital, where he requested medicine, before going back home after the doctors cleared him and couldn't return to the hospital where they delivered their son.
Tori expressed her frustrations with Zach's lack of help, as she couldn't do anything after having her child via C-Section and getting help from her husband.
"You were like the deadbeat dad that night," she said. "Like, where's the dad at?' I just remember a nurse coming into my room that night and just sobbing and I couldn't just tell this woman why my husband wasn't there. It was just awful."
The pair shared that a few more months passed and they were back in the same situation. This time, Tori went with her husband, who ended up going to a hospital that specializes in dwarfism. While there, Zach's headache and pain became worse, and he was rushed for emergency surgery, after it was determined that his shunt was out of date and that fluid was being blocked due to scar tissue.
Tori remembers the fear that came with what the doctors called an "exploratory surgery."
"It was really scary watching you get rolled away, not knowing," she says.
Zach's surgery was successful. A year later, the reality TV star says that he is doing much better.
"We're up on a year on that and I have not had a migraine since then," he says. "Thank you for being there with me with everything. You took care of all the kids that whole time. My mom came in."
While the family can celebrate, Tori admits that there was a tough moment with explaining everything that was going on to their oldest son, Jackson.
"I came home and he asked me, 'Is dad gonna go to heaven? Is he gonna be with Papa?' she said through tears. "And I was like, 'No I hope not.' But that was a moment that was so hard to talk to my six-year-old about. We kept saying he's sick like we did with Papa, and so he did have this moment of 'I'm gonna lose my dad.' and that was heartbreaking.'"
The pair, who are also parents of Lilah, 3, and Josiah, 1, are happy that they are out of the woods.
"You are alive and kicking and doing your thing," Tori tells Zach. "Thank the Lord above."
Zach adds, "I feel like that was a fun story, it's been a year and we're very celebratory about it."
Fans will see the moment unfold when the new season of Little People, Big World premieres Feb 20 on TLC.
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