Canadian Broadway star Nick Cordero has woken up from a medically induced coma weeks after having his right leg amputated as a result of complications from COVID-19.
The Hamilton, Ont.-born actor’s wife Amanda Kloots confirmed the news on Tuesday via an Instagram story.
“Dada is awake. He is awake, guys,” she said to her friends and followers while dancing around in excitement with the couple’s 10-month-old son, Elvis.
“He is awake. It’s just that Nick is so weak right now that even opening his eyes (or) closing his eyes takes … all of his energy.”
Cordero, 41, is best known for his starring roles in smash-hit Broadway shows Waitress and Bullets Over Broadway — which earned him a Tony Award nomination — as well as the 2017 Zach Braff film Going in Style.
He was admitted to the intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Calif., on March 31 and remained on a ventilator, unconscious, until May 12 after having contracted the novel coronavirus.
Hours later, in a followup Instagram story, Kloots wrote: “Nick is awake! He is extremely weak, so weak that he can’t close his mouth. But he is following commands, which means mental status is coming back!
“This is a long road, a very long road,” she added. “We are on our way to #CodeRocky.”
A “Code Rocky” refers to when a patient beats the life-threatening virus and is able to leave the hospital, according to Peacehealth.org.
For the last six weeks, Kloots had been sending daily videos of herself and Elvis to Cordero directly using the hashtag #WakeUpNick. She also shared the videos with her followers and encouraged them to join in on a daily singalong of her husband’s 2018 song Live Your Life.
Furthermore, on April 18, a friend of Kloots launched a GoFundMe page in an effort to help the family cover Cordero’s medical bills. As of this writing, the fundraiser has received more than US$517,000 in donations (of a $480,000 goal).
As a result of COVID-19, Cordero had experienced blood clotting in his right leg. Though he was treated with blood thinners for a while to help stop the clots, his doctors decided to stop the treatment because it was causing internal bleeding.
“We took him off blood thinners but that again was going to cause some clotting in the right leg, so the right leg will be amputated today,” Kloots said in a statement provided by the Associated Press on April 18.
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— With files from the Associated Press