Coco Austin is doing everything in her power to support her father, Steve Austin, who was recently admitted to the ICU due to his battle with COVID-19.
“I just want him to pull through,” she revealed to Page Six in an interview Wednesday night. “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.”
Steve, 63, is battling coronavirus at Abrazo Arrow Head Hospital in Glendale, Arizona, where doctors have informed Coco, who has been quarantining in Arizona, how her dad may have to go on a ventilator as he has pneumonia in both lungs.
“He’s at the point where he can’t even talk,” Coco revealed. “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. He’s just getting so frustrated that he’s in this position that he doesn’t want to get on the phone.”
Steve is currently being given steroids to help him “feel good,” Coco shares. He has no underlying medical conditions.
Coco, who is married to rapper Ice-T with whom she shares 4-year-old, Chanel, recently gave an update on her dad’s condition: “It’s not looking good. I wish I had better results today.”
Coco, 41, shared how she last saw Steve in Arizona on Father’s Day, when she and a few family members with whom she was quarantining decided to celebrate. She said her father’s symptoms started that day.
“He was feeling lethargic,” Coco shared. “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.”
Coco shared how Steve’s symptoms began to worsen and he began to experience shortness of breath as well as feeling pins were “being stabbed throughout his body.” It wasn’t until nine days after Father’s Day that he sought medical attention, which Coco said 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.”
Coco shared how Steve was quarantine prior to contracting COVID-19 but does not believe her father was “the best at the face masks.”
“I know my family, in this house, we are very good,” she said. “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.”
But, Coco added, “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.”
Coco shared that while is unclear how her father contracted the virus, two of her aunts also caught the disease. One was admitted to the hospital while the other is quarantined at home but feels like she is “dying.”
“It’s like, ‘Oh my God, like, my family is falling apart,” Coco said. “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.”
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She and Ice-T have been quarantining in their second home in Arizona for close to a month and a half. And since the couple was exposed to Coco’s dad on Father’s Day, the rest of the family is currently monitoring themselves to see if they also contracted the coronavirus.
Aside from Coco’s two aunts and her father, no other family members have shown symptoms. Both Coco and Ice-T are hoping that by sharing their personal experience, they can spread awareness so others will take the virus more seriously.
“I mostly wanted to do this interview to let people know that I didn’t feel like my family could be touched,” Coco shared. “And to know that the most healthy person in this family is about to go on a ventilator, they’re talking about that, which is really hard because I’m pretty much the next of kin. I have a really big family and they put it in my hands to make these decisions, so it’s been really hard to have to even talk about.”
She advised everyone, “Mask it up! How hard is it to mask it up?”
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