Nick Cordero will likely need a double lung transplant as the Broadway actor continues to fight for his life three months after being hospitalized with the coronavirus. Wife Amanda Kloots told Gayle King on CBS This Morning Thursday that while Cordero is now COVID-negative and no longer comatose, the Tony nominee is still very ill.
“He is doing okay. He’s stable,” Kloots told King. “Nick’s body is extremely weak. Muscles have atrophied, so he can’t move his body yet.” Kloots explained that Cordero can open his eyes now and respond to commands by looking up or down, even sometimes trying to smile or move his jaw to answer her questions. She added that in a “perfect world,” the “ultimate goal” would be to have him be a double lung transplant candidate.
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“[There is a] 99 percent chance that he would be needing that in order to live the kind of life that I know my husband would want to live,” Kloots said. “That is a long road away, and a lot of things would have to line up for Nick to be a candidate for that.” The family hasn’t lost hope, however, and Kloots said she has been talking to amputees and researching prosthetics as a way to keep her husband’s spirits up after he learned that his leg had to be amputated while he was fighting the virus.
“And I tell him, I say, ‘You’re going to walk out of this hospital, honey. I believe it, I know you can. … We’re going to dance again. You’re going to hold your son again,’” she said. “My line is, ‘Don’t get lost, get focused.’” As she strives to maintain that focus, Kloots admitted there are definitely bad days, recalling the moment the other day in which she, feeling “exhausted and sad,” broke down screaming and crying in front of her parents. “You have to have those days. You have to break down,” she said. “That’s only natural. You know, I am a strong person, but even strong people break. And that’s okay. You have to break down so that you can build yourself up again.”
Spending every day in the hospital with her husband, Kloots is holding out hope that, at one point, he will be able to return home with her. “You know, I just want to jump in his bed and hug him and grab him and squeeze him. But, you know, you have to be very careful with everything that’s going on, so I grab his hand,” she said. “And I’m waiting for the day that he holds my hand back.”
