Trying to stay strong. Coco Austin gave an emotional update on father Steve Austin‘s health shortly after he was admitted to an Arizona hospital for symptoms of COVID-19.
“I just want him to pull through,” the 41-year-old Ice Loves Coco star told Page Six on Wednesday, 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.”
One day earlier, Coco’s husband, Ice-T, announced via Twitter that his father-in-law, 63, was battling the novel coronavirus as cases continue to rise across the United States. The rapper, 62, shared a photo of Steve in a hospital gown with an oxygen mask on his face — and his condition may already be getting worse.
“He’s at the point where he can’t even talk,” Coco explained on Wednesday, noting that doctors are considering putting her father on a ventilator. The model last visited her dad in Arizona for Father’s Day in June and noticed that he was more “lethargic” than usual. “My dad is very much a chatty-box. He’s very much a conversationalist and he wasn’t talking that day much, so there was something up that we knew.”
Before being taken to the hospital, Steve experienced shortness of breath and a number of other symptoms that made him feel as if he were “being stabbed throughout his body.” Despite guidelines put in place by the CDC, politicians and other health officials, Coco admitted her dad wasn’t “the best at [wearing] the face masks” to protect himself.
“I think that’s why he’s in the position he is in right now,” she said, adding that two of her aunts have also tested positive for the disease. “It’s like, ‘Oh my God, like, my family is falling apart.’ 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.”
Coco and the Law & Order: SVU star, who share 4-year-old daughter Chanel, are taking extra precautions to keep themselves safe since visiting her father in Arizona, even though testing is hard to come by during the pandemic. Despite her family’s hardship, the reality TV personality is doing her part to keep herself and others as healthy as possible.
“Mask it up!” she told Page Six. “How hard is it to mask it up?”
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