Coco Austin is doing her best to stay strong after her father, Steve Austin, was admitted to the UCI in the midst of his battle with COVID-19.
“I just want him to get ahead,” he told Page Six in an emotional interview on Wednesday night. “I have been sending as much love as I can, but I can only do so much from a distance. I want to be in the room with him right now and take him by the hand, and just let him know that his family loves him, that he must move on, and that it’s too soon for him to leave. ”
Steve, 63, is battling the coronavirus at the Hug ArrowHead Hospital in Glendale, Arizona, where doctors have told Coco, who has been staying in Arizona, that his father may have to use a ventilator because he has pneumonia. in both lungs.
“He’s at the point where he can’t even speak,” Coco shared. “She can’t even say a word. Saying ‘no’ or ‘yes’ to him is so difficult that I have to use text messages now, and today he doesn’t even want to send text messages anymore. He is so frustrated that he is in this position that he doesn’t want to talk on the phone. “
Steve, who has no underlying medical conditions, is on steroids to help him “feel good,” he said.
The former “Ice Loves Coco” star, who is married to actor and rapper Ice-T, told us about Steve’s condition: “It doesn’t look good. I wish I had better results today.”
Coco, 41, said she last saw Steve in Arizona on Father’s Day, when she and some family members with whom she was quarantined met to celebrate. She said her father’s symptoms started that day.
“It felt lethargic,” recalled the reality star. “My dad is a quack. He is very talkative and was not talking much that day, so there was something we knew. “
Coco said Steve’s symptoms worsened and he began to experience shortness of breath and feel that the pins “were being stabbed throughout the body.” He didn’t seek medical attention until nine days after Father’s Day, which Coco said was a mistake.
“Knowing what he’s been through, he let this disease or virus settle in him for nine days before doing anything,” he said. “That is basically what they say is too late.”
Coco said Steve was in quarantine before hiring COVID-19, but he doesn’t think his father was “the best in facial masks.”
“I know my family, in this house, we are very good,” he said. “In fact, we have been having fun with the masks. I’m coordinating it with our outfits and making it something to be happy about rather than sad. “
But, the model added: “I don’t think my dad was a good mask wearer. I think that’s why he is in the position he is in now. “
Coco said it is unclear how her father contracted the deadly virus, noting that two of her aunts also have the disease. One was also admitted to the hospital, and the other is quarantined at home, but feels he is “dying.”
“It’s like, ‘OMG, my family is falling apart,” Coco said. “We are here thinking that we came to Arizona to escape the madness in New York and New Jersey, and I feel like we are now swallowing it up in the rush that just happened here.”
Earlier this week, Arizona broke the record for most single-day coronavirus infections in the state with 3,858 cases on Sunday.
On a recent trip to the grocery store, Coco said he felt like “aliens from outer space” because he was one of the few people who wore masks and gloves while shopping.
She and Ice-T have been quarantined at their second home in Arizona for about a month and a half, and the “Law and Order: SVU” star has spent most of her time playing Xbox or talking to friends on the phone. Because the production of his show in New York stopped until at least August or September.
Since the couple, who are parents to their 4-year-old daughter Chanel, were exposed to Coco’s father on Father’s Day, they and the rest of their family are being monitored to see if they also contracted the coronavirus. Other than Coco’s two aunts and her father, no other family member has shown symptoms.
“It’s hard to get tested here when you don’t have symptoms, but I do want to get an antibody [test]Coco said. “We’ve been talking about where to go to get that, but it’s very difficult.”
Coco and Ice-T wanted to talk about their personal experience to raise awareness and for people to take the virus more seriously.
“I mainly wanted to do this interview so that people would know that I didn’t feel like my family could be touched,” Coco told us. “And to know that the healthiest person in this family is about to use a fan, they are talking about it, which is really difficult because I am almost the closest relative. I have a really big family and they put my decisions in my hands, so it has been very difficult to have to talk about it. ”
The reality star said she has had trouble sleeping because she has “so much responsibility on my shoulders,” so she has been working as an escape.
She advised everyone, “Mask! How hard is it to mask it?
.
