Nick Cordero’s COVID-19 Update: He Wouldn’t Survive Lung Transplant, Wife Says

Nick Cordero, 41, miraculously woke up after being in a medically induced coma for six weeks due to complications from coronavirus, but the Broadway star’s journey back to health continues to be an uphill battle. His wife, celebrity fitness trainer Amanda Kloots, shared an update via Instagram on Thursday, discussing a woman in Chicago who received a double-lung transplant after suffering from COVID-19.

Kloots said that she has read all about this young woman in her 20s whose lungs were so damaged by the coronavirus 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.

For the thousands of people who’ve been following Cordero’s rollercoaster journey back to health, Kloots said that numerous have reached out to her wondering if he could also benefit from a lung transplant.

Kloots, who recently celebrated their son Elivs’ 1-year-old birthday, 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 That Cordero’s CT Scans ‘Did Not Look Pretty’ on Friday

Kloots shared that she had both good news and bad news concerning Cordero’s health on Friday afternoon. She said that his “white blood count is down which is great. The lower, the better. And we are seeing some inflammation going down, but we’ll have more information on that Wednesday.”

As for the bad news, “The CT scan is not the prettiest, unfortunately,” Kloots said. “But the doctor who’s been with him since Day One, told me today that despite a not pretty CT scan, that the lungs are amazing and to just keep thinking about all the options we have to get him stronger.”

The doctor also insisted that Kloots not to give up hope. “He’s seen lungs recover,” she said. “You don’t know the functionality of things based on a picture.”

Cordero Did Not Have Any Underlying Health Conditions Prior to Contracting COVID-19

Cordero, a Tony Award-winning actor who starred in the Broadway musicals Waitress and Rock of Ages, spent 42 days in the intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai hospital and needed his right leg amputated due to blood clots. He did not have any underlying health issues, according to Kloots.

Kloots, who’s been married to Cordero since 2017, wrote on Instagram:

Nick is 41 years old. He had no pre-existing health conditions. We do not know how he got COVID-19, but he did. He went to the ER on March 30th and intubated on a ventilator on April 1. Since then has he has suffered an infection that caused his heart to stop, he needed resuscitation, he had two mini-strokes, went on ECMO, went on dialysis, needed surgery to [remove] an ECMO cannula that was restricting blood flow to his leg, a [fasciotomy] to relieve pressure on the leg, amputation of his right leg, an MRI to further investigate brain damage, several bronchial sweeps to clear out his lungs, a [sepsis] infection causing septic shock, a fungus in his lungs, holes in his lungs, a tracheostomy, blood clots, low blood count and platelet levels, and a temporary pacemaker to assist his heart. This disease does not only [affect] old people. This is real. A perfectly healthy 41-year-old man!

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