Nick Cordero Update: ‘They Told Me 4 Times He Won’t Survive,’ Wife Says

It’s been nearly two months since Nick Cordero, 41, miraculously woke up after being in a medically induced coma for six weeks due to complications from coronavirus, and the Broadway star’s journey back to health continues to be an uphill battle. On July 2, his wife, celebrity fitness trainer Amanda Kloots, opened up to Gayle King on CBS This Morning to give an update on his health.

Thursday marked Cordero’s 91st day in Cedars Sinai Hospital’s intensive care unit. Kloots said, “He’s stable… He can still open his eyes, and when he is alert and awake, he’ll answer commands by looking up or down, yes or no questions. When I’m asking him, he will even try to smile or move his jaw. The nurses have all said that he answers my questions the best.”

Broadway star Nick Cordero is still fighting for his life, after being diagnosed with COVID-19. He’s still critically ill, even though he’s now COVID negative & no longer in a coma.@GayleKing spoke with Amanda Kloots about her husband’s condition & why she’s holding onto hope. pic.twitter.com/r1yhBuKpua

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) July 2, 2020

Kloots, 38, a former Radio City Rockette, who’s been taking care of their 1-year-old son Elvis, remains a vision of strength throughout this awful ordeal. “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.’ My line is, ‘Don’t get lost, get focused.’”

However, KLoots admits that it’s not always easy to remain positive. While she has the support of her family, who’ve flown out to live with her and Elvis in Los Angeles while Cordero remains in the hospital, “You have to break down,” she said. “And I let it out. I screamed and cried in front of my parents… You have those days.”

“They told me four times that he won’t survive,” Kloots said. “Sometimes even he won’t survive through the night, but he has. I believe that God is the only person that’s going to decide when and if my husband goes. So I will never try to play that role.He’s fighting. I see it every day. Nick’s doctor sees it. And as long as he’s in there and fighting, I’ll continue to fight with him.”

Cordero Will Need a Double Lung Transplant to Live the Kind of Life He Wants to Live, Kloots Says

Kloots told King, “Our ultimate, ultimate goal would be to get him to be a candidate for a double lung transplant. [There’s] a 99% chance that he would be needing that in order to live the kind of life that I know my husband would want to live… That is a long road away and a lot of things would have to line up in order for Nick to be a candidate for that.”

In early June, a double lung transplant was out of the question for Cordero, so it’s a huge sign of improvement for this to even be a part of the conversation.

Kloots said on Instagram that she’s read all about the young woman in Chicago who received a double-lung transplant. Her lungs were so damaged by COVID-19 that she’d die without her blood being oxygenated outside her body on an ECMO machine. On June 5, the doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital performed the first successful double-lung transplant on a coronavirus patient to help her chances of making a full recovery.

Kloots said that while her husband and this “inspiring” young woman’s cases are very similar, as they both spent nearly two months in the intensive care unit on a ventilator or other machine, and both suffer from ongoing infections in the lungs, that Cordero is too weak to survive such an invasive surgery.

“Unfortunately, at this time, we don’t think Nick could handle or survive a lung transplant. So, this isn’t on the table for nick at the moment. If one day, he does get strong enough, maybe this is something that could be a possibility for Nick. But right now, [it’s] not a possibility. He just wouldn’t survive.”

Kloots Said Cordero Has Lost 65 Pounds Since He’s Been in the ICU

During a Q & A session on Instagram Live on June 24, Kloots answered numerous questions about Cordero’s health and what lies ahead. She said, “What’s so heartbreaking is that he’s so weak. He’s so weak that he still can’t move and his muscles are definitely atrophying.

“This is really hard because what Nick has lost is muscle,” Kloots continued. “His muscles are just atrophied.” When a fan asked if it was a “priority” for doctors to help Cordero regain the 65 pounds he’d lost while being in the ICU, “You can’t really gain your muscle back until you can move, so they have him on some high protein and high-calorie food, but he’s gotta move,” Kloots answered.

“The next goal is to get Nick’s blood pressure under control,” Kloots said. “That might mean he has an infection, so they’re trying to find this infection. After that, if we can get that blood pressure back, it would be to go on intermittent dialysis. The white blood count is actually in a good range, but the blood pressure is still an issue. He’s getting a transfusion right now. Fingers crossed.”

“When he gets out of the hospital … because he is getting out of this hospital,” Kloots noted, “he would go to a rehab center and probably be at a rehab center for a year before even coming home. They say for every week in the ICU is a month in rehab,” she said. Therefore, even in the best-case scenario, Cordero won’t be discharged from the hospital until months from now.

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