'DEVASTATING'
Kate Garraway reveals husband Derek told her ‘I can’t go on’ in distressing phone call from his hospital bed
KATE Garraway has revealed her seriously ill husband Derek Draper told her "I can't go on" in a distressing call from his hospital bed.
Hours before Kate presented Good Morning Britain live to the nation one day last November, her barely conscious husband had said he was struggling to cope.
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Derek, 53, had spent months in intensive care after coronavirus ravaged his body, causing his liver, kidneys and heart to fail.
The continual suffering amid his nightmare scenario left him thinking of death.
Kate told the "Derek had been drifting in and out of consciousness and when he said that, it was absolutely devastating, but it showed me he was still in there. Even though it was terrible to think his spirits were so low”.
On Tuesday night, Kate's documentary Finding Derek will air on ITV. Viewers will see the broadcaster have a moving Facetime call in which Derek says: "Kate, there’s no way out. There’s no way out.
“I’ve got to the point where I just think f*** it. Just f*** it.”
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She replies: “As in die?”
A tearful Derek then says: “Yes... I don’t know how to cope, I don’t know how to cope."
Speaking ahead of her ITV documentary Finding Derek airing tomorrow night, the Good Morning Britain presenter revealed that her husband has "slipped back" as she has been unable to see him due to the pandemic.
She told the : “Things have regressed a little bit this year since January, but how much that is to do with the restrictions of not being able to visit, is unclear.
“It felt like we were moving forward at Christmas, now it feels like we’ve slipped back.
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“And I’ve felt like I’m sort of hanging over the side of a ship, trying to hold onto him, so that when he kind of bobs up from this ocean of unconsciousness, you can see him sort of click in and you don’t know whether it’s because he can suddenly find a way to get out.”
Kate and their children Darcey, 15, and Billy, 11, managed to visit at Christmas but they haven't been able to physically see him in 2021.
Former Labour Party adviser Derek may never fully recover following his illness.
Speaking on The One Show last week, Kate explained that his brain is "no longer his friend".
She said: "He is somebody who both in this time before I knew him, when he was in politics, and also since in all the work he has done in mental health, because that’s his thing now.
"His brain has always been his best friend and he's lived on his wits and now suddenly his brain - as we all know controls his body - is no longer his friend and he's fighting to get out."
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Kate began working on the documentary in August and had hoped she'd be reunited with her husband at home before it aired, but that has not been the case.
While the documentary shows footage of Derek in hospital, Kate wants the piece to educate rather than terrify.
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"We don't want to scare people with what he's been through," she said on GMB.
"When we talk about long Covid: breathing problems, fatigue, anxiety... it's much more widespread than that."
Kate recently shared the first photo of Derek fighting for his life in hospital.
In the emotional trailer for Finding Derek, she says: "Derek is the sickest person the team of doctors have treated this year.
"Is he going to be able to come back or will he be alive but no longer the person he was?"
The screen goes black as a message reads: "One year later, Derek is still in hospital."
Earlier this month, was told her husband Derek may be "locked in" forever.
After contracting the virus more than a year ago, Derek faced an uphill battle to survive.
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Countless infections have left holes in his lungs and the battle has seen him lose eight stone.
However, Kate said that doctors still can’t tell her whether Derek will recover - and they have warned her he may remain “locked in” for good.
“The very worst moment was when they said he could be locked in for ever," she told .
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"And I just thought, this is a horror story. I don’t know if he’ll ever have any kind of life again. We just don’t know."
In the early months of Derek's ill health a hospital mistake saw Kate told Derek "may have died" - and she faced an agonising 24-hour wait to discover the truth.
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She said: "I was just sitting on the phone, waiting to know if he’d died or not."
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Kate was forced to wait more than a day for news about her husband's condition and had no idea if he was even alive.
She added: "Then it turned out that somebody had died who had a similar name to his."
Emotional Kate Garraway says she’s ‘desperately trying to hold on’ to husband Derek as he fights effects of Covid
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