Rihanna‘s dad Ronald Fenty thought he ‘would die’ as he battled coronavirus.
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The 66-year-old revealed he had tested positive for the deadly infection in a new interview.
“My daughter Robyn was checking in on me every day,” he told The Sun, referring to the pop star by her birth name.
“I thought I was going to die to be honest,” he said.
Ronald said Rihanna did everything she could to help him, from her home in the United States.
He explained: “I have to say, I love you so much, Robyn.
“She did so much for me. I appreciate everything she has done.”
The 32-year-old pop star even purchased a ventilator and sent it to Ronald in Barbados, but he said he had not needed to use it.
He said of his illness: “I got a fever up inside of my nose. I had a fever across my lips. It was just a lot of fever.
“I feared the worst. I thought I was going to die, honestly.”
Ronald spent 14 days inside the Paragon Isolation Center on the island.
Despite Rihanna’s efforts to help her father, the two have not always had an easy relationship.
Ronald has battled addiction to crack cocaine in the past and has long been a heavy drinker.
Ronald divorced Rihanna’s mother Monica when the singer was a young teen. Rihanna once told Oprah that as a child she witnessed her father physically abuse her mother, once breaking her nose.
Then in 2008 Ronald was sent home from her North American tour following his drunken behavior on her tour bus.
Ronald has said that Rihanna then froze him out for two years before they reconciled.
In 2013, the singer quietly put Ronald through a $58,000 Malibu rehab program to save him from jail after he was arrested during a visit to California.
But in 2014 Ronald was thrown out of her Diamond Ball after embarrassing his daughter by getting drunk and falling over on the red carpet.
He left California without seeing his daughter on that trip, although the two later reconciled once more. They were seen publicly together in November 2018, when they celebrated her maternal grandfather Lionel Braithwaite’s 90th birthday at a Bridgetown nightclub in Barbados.
And despite subsequent legal problems – Rihanna had to sue her dad to stop him attempting to profit off her name – she even purchased the large house in which he now lives.
Rihanna announced last week that she and Jay-Z’s respective foundations were each donating $1million to help to support undocumented workers, imprisoned, elderly and homeless people, and the children of health workers and first responders in both Los Angeles and New York City.
Her announcement came just a few days after she pledged to give $5 million to various causes through her Clara Lionel Foundation.