Detailing how the illness has taken its toll on her father's emotions, the wife of Ice-T wishes she could be in the same room with her father and lets 'him know that his family loves him.'
- Jul 3, 2020
AceShowbiz - Coco Austin is doing her best to provide her father with mental support after he was diagnosed with coronavirus. After her husband Ice-T revealed that his father-in-law Steve Austin tested positive for the illness, the former reality TV star has opened up on the devastation that her father's COVID-19 battle has put him and her family through.
"I just want him to pull through," she emotionally told Page Six in an interview on Wednesday night, July 1. "I've been sending as much love as I can but there's only so much I can do from a distance. I want to be in the room with him right now and hold his hands, and just let him know that his family loves him, to push through, and this is too early for him to go."
Admitting that her father's mental condition is as bad as his physical condition is, Coco shared, "He's at the point where he can't even talk. He can't even say a word. For him to say 'no' or 'yes' is so hard that I have to use texting now, and today he doesn't even want to text anymore." She added, "He's just getting so frustrated that he's in this position that he doesn't want to get on the phone."
Steve, 63, is currently hospitalized at Abrazo ArrowHead Hospital in Glendale, Arizona. Doctors have informed Coco's family that her dad may have to go on a ventilator because he has pneumonia in both lungs. As for the treatment, Steve is being given steroids to help him "feel good," according to Coco. While his father has no underlying medical conditions, Coco said her father's condition is "not looking good" and she wished she "had better results today."
Coco last saw her father in Arizona on Father's Day when she and a few family members with whom she was quarantining got together to celebrate. She said she noticed the symptoms that day, recalling, "He was feeling lethargic. My dad is very much a chattybox. He's very much a conversationalist and he wasn't talking that day much, so there was something up that we knew."
His symptoms soon worsened and he began to experience shortness of breath and feel like pins were "being stabbed throughout his body." Steve only sought medical attention nine days after Father's Day, which Coco thinks was a mistake. "Knowing what he's gone through, he let this disease or virus sit in him for nine days before doing anything," she said. "That's basically what they say is too late."
While her family has been quarantining, Coco believes her father is not the best at wearing face mask. "I know my family, in this house, we are very good," so the 41-year-old glamour model claimed. "As a matter of fact, we've been having fun with the face masks. I'm coordinating it with our outfits and making it something to be happy about instead of being sad about."
Unlike the rest of her family members, however, Coco said of her father, "I don't think my dad was a good face mask wearer. I think that's why he's in the position he is in right now." Still, she wasn't sure how her father contracted the novel virus, while noting that two of her aunts have also contracted the disease.
"It's like, 'Oh my God, like, my family is falling apart,' " Coco shared her feeling after learning that some of her family members have tested positive for coronavirus. "We're here thinking we came to Arizona to get away from the craziness in New York and New Jersey, and I feel like we now swallowed it up in the spike that just happened here."
By sharing her family's experience, Coco hopes to spread awareness so people will take the virus more seriously. She went on advising people, "Mask it up! How hard is it to mask it up?"
