Kate Garraway promises to save husband Derek after illness leaves him ‘trapped in his head’
KATE Garraway has revealed the moment she promised “to save” her husband Derek after coronavirus left him “trapped in his head”. The Good Morning Britain presenter opened up about how her beloved husband of 16 years wanted to give up fighting his ongoing illness as he “didn’t know how to cope”. The 53-year-old vowed to […]
KATE Garraway has revealed the moment she promised “to save” her husband Derek after coronavirus left him “trapped in his head”.
The Good Morning Britain presenter opened up about how her beloved husband of 16 years wanted to give up fighting his ongoing illness as he “didn’t know how to cope”.
The 53-year-old vowed to bring him home, promising she would “find a way to make it better” and begged him to “hang in there” as he deteriorated.
Kate opened up ahead of Finding Derek, a new ITV documentary detailing the political advisers ongoing battle after the virus caused kidney failure, heart failure and liver damage.
The mother-of-two is seen video-calling her husband, who voices his concerns that there’s “no way out” after months of being in intensive care.
“Kate, there is no way out,” Derek can be heard saying in the heartbreaking footage from last November. “I’ve go to the point where I just think, f*** it.”
“As in die?” she tentatively asked him, before his tearful response: “Yes, I don’t know how to cope, I just don’t know how to cope.”
It was then that Kate, who shares children Darcey, 15, and Billy, 11, with Derek, promised to help him fully recover and bring him home.
“You don’t know how to cope with it,” she told him. “I know you feel like you’re trapped in your head and it’s terrifying.
“But you’re coming home, you’re coming back to your life and you will be the person, even better than, you were before. You will be.
“I will find a way to make it better. I promised you I would save you, and I’m going to save you. I will find a way, you just have to hang in there.”
She later explained: “Derek had been drifting in and out of consciousness when he said that, it was absolutely devastating.”
To keep Derek fighting, Kate stayed on her iPad talking to him for hours, through the night and into the next morning as she headed to work.
As she went live on air with GMB, she asked Derek’s intensive care nurses to put on the show so he could see her face to face.
Kate is continuing to fight to bring Derek home, who was placed into a coma during his battle with the virus, which has left him with devastating after effects.
She told The Mirror: “All he wants to do is be with the children, to be with me, to be with his friends and family. He wants to come back.
“I think he was at his wits’ end physically and mentally, but thankfully we have moved passed that and he is fighting on.”
Kate invited an ITV camera crew into her home last September with the hopes the documentary would end with him returning home.
Seven months on, Derek remains in hospital, with the film focusing on his year in intensive care and the upcoming recovery he still has to manage.
The heartbreaking footage shows Derek losing eight stone in weight, leaving him with almost no muscle in his arms and legs.
Due to lockdown, Kate and her children have not seen Derek in person since the start of the year – managing a one-off visit at Christmas.
It was the first time the children had been in the same room as their father since March last year when he first contracted Covid-19.
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Kate has converted the ground floor of their London home for Derek’s return, making it wheelchair accessible and put a bed in the lounge.
Sadly, his condition has not improved enough to allow even a short stay away from hospital for now, as Kate now waits to visit him in hospital again.
“[We have] filled him up with as much positivity as possible, ‘You’re going to be fine, you’re going to come home, it’s going to be OK,” she concluded.
“Even if you don’t really know if that’s true. I just want him to know that… He’s got some hope there.”
Kate Garraway: Finding Derek airs on Tuesday at 9pm on ITV.