UPDATE SATURDAY APRIL 25: Nick Cordero has been given a temporary pacemaker after doctors noticed an irregular heartbeat. Cordero’s wife, Amanda Kloots, posted the news on Instagram.
Kloots also said Cordero has now had two negative coronavirus tests and was likely in recovery from the virus.
“We just got a call from the doctors about Nick, and it looks like he had some irregular heart-beating last night that scared them enough to want to do a temporary pacemaker in Nick’s heart,” she said on her Instagram story. “His heart is functioning well, but he’s had these dips in his heart rate for a little while now. And this one last night was apparently enough that it requires them to do this procedure to put a temporary pacemaker in his heart, so that anytime they move him or need to do some procedures in the future to help him continually get better that they don’t have to worry about his heart rate dropping again.”
“It came down to a point where honestly it was life or leg, and we had to choose life,” Kloots said on NBC’s Today Monday. “I choose life.”
Kloots said that while being put on an ECMO machine saved Cordero’s life, it also caused the blood issues that resulted in the amputation.
In an Instagram Story yesterday, Kloots said, “It seems like Nick’s body is responding well to his surgery and recovering well. I asked for a miracle yesterday because my spirits were low and I think we got one today. He is alive and recovering well.”
An uneventful day in the ICU, she wrote, “is a GOOD DAY!! HALLELUJAH.”
On Saturday, following the surgery, Kloots said, “Surgery went well, he’s recovering well from surgery, the wound looks okay, he didn’t lose a lot of blood.”
Cordero, who starred in Broadway’s Waitress and Bullets Over Broadway and on TV in Blue Bloods, has been sedated for several weeks at the ICU at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. An upturn in his battle was followed last week by a setback from blood clotting, necessitating the amputation.
PREVIOUSLY, April 18: Some good news for a change: Broadway actor Nick Cordero, battling COVID-19 at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, is “getting stronger,” reports wife Amanda Kloots, who has posted an Instagram message saying that “it’s all about small wins in the ICU.”
“We just [got] some good news and it’s all about small wins in the ICU,” writes Kloots about the Waitress and TV’s Blue Bloods actor. “Nick is getting stronger and the AMAZING doctors and nurses think they can take him off ECMO soon! This would mean his heart and lungs would be functioning on their own. Anything can change in an instant, but we are staying positive! HE IS HEARING US GUYS!”
The apparent turnaround comes a week after Cordero’s condition worsened to critical, with Kloots, a fitness instructor, writing, “My whole world has stopped. Please pray for my husband.”
In a separate Instagram story post, Kloots shared the “really, really good news” that Cordero’s “heart and lungs are getting stronger,” possibly allowing him to be weaned off the machine that assists those functions. “Big win,” said Kloots, cautioning that “we still need him to wake up.”
Cordero played Victor Lugo on TV’s Blue Bloods in 2017-18.