Nick Cordero, Broadway star from Ontario, has leg amputated due to COVID-19 complications
Cordero entered L.A. hospital on March 31 and has been on a ventilator
Tony Award-nominated actor Nick Cordero has had his his right leg amputated in a Los Angeles hospital after suffering complications from the coronavirus, his wife says.
Amanda Kloots on Instagram wrote late Saturday that Cordero "made it out of surgery alive and is headed to his room to rest and recover."
Cordero had been treated with blood thinners to help with clotting in his leg after contracting COVID-19, but his doctors had to stop the treatment because it was causing internal bleeding.
"We took him off blood thinners but that again was going to cause some clotting in the right leg, so the right leg will be amputated today," she said earlier Saturday.
Cordero entered the intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on March 31 and has been on a ventilator and unconscious.
His wife has been sending him daily videos of her and their 10-month-old son, Elvis, so he could see them when he woke up, and urging friends and fans to join a daily sing-a-long. A GoFundMe fundraiser has raised more than $200,000 for his treatment.
Cordero played a mob soldier with a flair for the dramatic in Broadway's 2014 adaptation of Woody Allen's 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway, for which he received a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a musical. He moved to Los Angeles to star in Rock of Ages.
The lanky Cordero originated the menacing role of husband Earl opposite his estranged wife, played by Jessie Mueller, in Waitress on Broadway, as well as the role of Sonny in Chazz Palminteri's A Bronx Tale.
On the small screen, Cordero appeared in several episodes of Blue Bloods and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as well as Lilyhammer, and he had a role in the film Going in Style.
The virus has sickened other Broadway veterans, including the actors Danny Burstein, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Gavin Creel, Aaron Tveit and Laura Bell Bundy as well as composer David Bryan. It has also claimed the life of Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally.
