Great Neck teen touts special shirt for medical ports on 'Live with Kelly and Ryan'

A Great Neck teenager in cancer remission appeared on "Live with Kelly and Ryan" Tuesday to talk about a special shirt he and his family created that allows easy access to intravenous medical ports commonly implanted in cancer patients' chests.

JZips — the name of both the shirt and his family's eponymous nonprofit organization that makes and gives them away — grew out of a need that 17-year-old Jordan Harouche himself experienced with such implanted ports, he tells Newsday by phone from his home.

These ports, marketed under such brand names as Mediport, PowerPort and Port-a-Cath, are a type of central venous catheter, a flexible tube placed into a chest vein so that intravenous medication and fluids can readily be given and blood samples readily taken. In October 2019, when he was first diagnosed with a rare nongerminomatous germ-cell tumor, Harouche learned he would need such a port for his radiation and chemotherapy. "I was not happy at all," he says, "because it freaked me out, the idea of having something sewn into my chest."

More to the point, says the former varsity lacrosse player at Great Neck South High School, from which he recently graduated, was the need to repeatedly remove his shirt so that medical staff could access his port. His pituitary-gland based cancer had made him gain much weight, he says, "so I wasn't comfortable taking my shirt off in front of everyone. The idea of me just being able to open my shirt and show them my port, it was much more comfortable."

Shirts with zipper openings for ports already were available but expensive, says Jordan's mother, Jodi Harouche, who with husband David Harouche runs the technology-based communications company Multimedia Plus. "I had bought Jordan a Mediport shirt that was a plain black T-shirt with a zipper sewn in, and it was over $50."

The notion to craft homemade shirts for Jordan came from the teen's paternal grandmother, whose own mother had been a seamstress in Manhattan's Garment District. "So she made me a shirt with zippers by just taking one of her old bags, taking out the zipper and then sewing the zipper into the T-shirt," says Jordan Harouche. "And it ended up working perfectly. So when I went to the clinic, I was wearing it and everyone was like, 'Oh, where'd you get that shirt?' I said my grandmother made it, and then we saw the demand."

Through donations, Jordan and his family have created and given away more than 3,000 JZips shirts, says Jodi Harouche. They and their 501(c)(3) charitable organization's volunteer board hope to give away a thousand more shirts in September, which President Barack Obama in 2012 proclaimed Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

With a focus on children, the shirts feature colorful characters, primarily Marvel and DC superheroes. "We haven't come across any pushback from any of the licensees or manufacturers," says Jodi Harouche, adding, "Our goal as we grow is to be able to work with them."

Jordan Harouche, who begins attending Hofstra University in Hempstead this fall, has been roughly a year in remission, though he must take medication all his life for related kidney damage. Regardless, says the youngest of three brothers, "I'm feeling fantastic and I feel grateful every single day. … And I look back and think about it and I'm, like, 'Wow, I'm so grateful to be walking in the shoes I am today, being able to see my friends and my family, just being alive.' Honestly, I'm so grateful for it."