Broadway star Nick Cordero 'had a bad morning,' wife Amanda Kloots says
Broadway star Nick Cordero, who has been battling COVID-19 in a Los Angeles hospital for weeks, "has had a bad morning," his wife, fitness trainer Amanda Kloots, said Wednesday.
Kloots, who has been providing daily updates on Cordero on her Instagram account, told her followers that "things are going a little downhill at the moment," though she did not elaborate on what she meant.
Instead, with her voice breaking, Kloots asked for her fans to keep her family in their thoughts, and encouraged everyone to sing his song "Live Your Life" at 3 p.m. PT.
"I am asking again for all the prayers — mega prayers right now," she said. "I know that this virus is not gonna get him down. It's not how his story ends, so just keep us in your thoughts and prayers today. Thank you."
Cordero, who's best known for appearing in shows including "Waitress" and "Bullets Over Broadway," first went to the emergency room in late March for what he believed was pneumonia. He was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and later tested positive for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus. To help his breathing, the 41-year-old actor was put into a medically induced coma.
"He didn't have a fever. He didn't have a cough. He had a sense of smell, he had a sense of taste, so we really didn't think it was COVID, especially his no preexisting conditions," Kloots told "Good Morning America" last week. "Very shortly, after about only two days, he was on a ventilator."
In late April, doctors amputated Cordero's right leg after blood thinners used to help with clotting caused other issues, according to Kloots. She added in a video shared to Instagram that his lungs were "severely damaged" by the virus, so much so that they resembled those of a 50-year smoker. However, on May 12, Kloots excitedly revealed that Cordero was awake.
"I can't express how happy I am today," Kloots told ABC News' Michael Strahan in an interview that aired May 13 on "GMA."
"They always end it with, 'We just need that mental status. We need to wake him up - we need to wake him up," Kloots said of her conversations with her husband's doctors. "And it's just been this heaviness that's kind of held over us for this time."
The doctor said, 'I think we can officially say he is awake,' and I mean, that was just the best news you could hear," she added.
Kloots, Cordero and their 11-month-old son, Elvis, recently moved from New York City to Los Angeles so that Cordero could star in a West Coast production of "Rock Of Ages," which he also starred in on Broadway. Kloots said on April 30 that Cordero's hospitalization has been "very hard to deal with."
"I've definitely let myself cry. I have definitely let myself scream in rage and just be frustrated, but I think what I always come around to is what will help Nick the most right now? What will help me the most right now?" she said.
What to know about Coronavirus:
- How it started and how to protect yourself: Coronavirus explained
- What to do if you have symptoms: Coronavirus symptoms
- Tracking the spread in the US and Worldwide: Coronavirus map
