Broadway star Nick Cordero's wife speaks out after he wakes up from coma

ByLESLEY MESSER ABCNews logo

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Broadway star Nick Cordero, who has been battling COVID-19 for more than a month, has emerged from a medically induced coma, according to his wife, Amanda Kloots.

"I can't express how happy I am today," Kloots told ABC News' Michael Strahan in an interview that aired Wednesday on "Good Morning America." "The news is that he is officially awake!"

Cordero, 41, who has starred in various Broadway hits, including "Waitress" and "Bullets Over Broadway," has been sedated in the intensive care unit of Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles since April 1.

"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."

"And to get the news today ... 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 said.

For the past few weeks, Kloots has provided daily updates on Cordero's status, encouraging her Instagram followers to share footage of themselves dancing to his song "Live Your Life" using the hashtag #WakeUpNick.

Kloots said the first signs of his brain awakening came through on Mother's Day as a gift.

"He's started following commands, which was a huge deal," Kloots told "GMA." "If he answered a question with a yes, he looks up, and a no, he looks down. And so to finally hear the doctor say, we're seeing these early, early signs, but I think it's happening was a huge sigh of relief."

Soon, she said Tuesday, they may be able to use the hashtag #CodeRocky, which was created to celebrate COVID-19 patients being discharged from the hospital.

"Nick is awake! He is extremely weak, so weak that he can't close his mouth," Kloots wrote on Instagram. "But he is following commands, which means mental status is coming back! This is a long road, a very long road. We are on our way to #CodeRocky."

Cordero first went to the emergency room in late March for what he believed was pneumonia. He was hospitalized and later tested positive for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus, and was put into a medically induced coma to help his breathing.

"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," said Kloots. "Very shortly, after about only two days, he was on a ventilator and intubated."

In late April, Cordero had his right leg amputated after blood thinners used to help with clotting caused blood pressure issues and internal bleeding, according to Kloots. Additionally, the actor's lungs were "severely damaged," she explained.

"[His lungs] look almost like he's been a smoker for 50 years. They're that damaged," Kloots said on Instagram at the time. "There are holes in his lungs where obviously you don't want holes to be."

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.

"It serves me no purpose just to sit and worry and go down a hole, so I'm not," she continued. "If I can give anything to Nick, it's light and it's positivity and it's strength from afar. I also have to be a mom and be here for my son, and I know Nick would want me to do that for Elvis."

Friends set up a GoFundMe to help Kloots and Cordero cover medical bills and make their new home in Los Angeles wheelchair accessible. It has already raised over $500,000.

While Kloots says there is still a long road ahead of them, she's staying positive and imagining the day that her husband leaves the hospital and comes home.

"I'm not going to let him leave my side. I can't wait to be reunited with him. I miss him like crazy, Elvis misses him like crazy," she said. "And we can't wait to have him home."