A firm and emotional Karl-Anthony Towns has a plea for the world.
“I wanted to make this video so people understand that the severity of this disease is real,” he said at the conclusion of a nearly six-minute Instagram video Tuesday night. “This disease needs to not be taken lightly. Please protect your families, your loved ones, your friends, yourself. Practice social distancing. Please don’t be in places with a lot of people.”
The Timberwolves star is urging you to listen to medical professionals because he’s watching the battle his mother is in with coronavirus.
Jacqueline Cruz, the “strongest woman I know,” is in now a coma after entering a hospital last week, Towns said. When she began to feel ill, Towns and his sister urged Cruz to go to a hospital, where he said her conditions worsened. According to the center, she volleyed between a 101.9 and 103 temperature, which would spike once meds wore off, and her cough intensified.
“She was deteriorating in front of our eyes,” said Towns, about two weeks after the NBA shut down following the first positive cases of COVID-19 found in the league.
Recently, both Towns and his mother thought she had begun to show signs of coming out of it before her condition took a dive.
“Her lungs were extremely getting worse and she was having trouble breathing,” said the New Jersey native. “They were explaining to me she had to be put on a ventilator, she was getting worse. … I told her how much I love her. She was telling me things that I didn’t want to hear. I dismissed some things she was saying because it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.”
She was put in a medically induced coma, and Towns hasn’t been able to communicate with her since. Towns wants the world to know her story so there are fewer of them.
“This disease is deadly,” said Towns, who donated $100,000 to Mayo Clinic to help testing for the pandemic. “Me and my family, we’re going to keep fighting, we’re going to beat it, we’re going to win.
“I hope my story helps. I hope my story gives you the correct information.”