Good Morning Britain's Kate Garraway says doctors 'don't know how much better' her husband can get

KATE Garraway says doctors ‘don't know how much better’ her husband Derek Draper can get and ‘he sort of can't wake-up’.
Kate Garraway and her husband Derek Draper. Picture: Tim Ireland/PA WireKate Garraway and her husband Derek Draper. Picture: Tim Ireland/PA Wire
Kate Garraway and her husband Derek Draper. Picture: Tim Ireland/PA Wire

The Good Morning Britain presenter, 53, returned to the ITV studio in an emotional appearance 100 days since Mr Draper, 52, was hospitalised with coronavirus.

She said she had been told six times that Mr Draper was not ‘going to make it’.

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The TV host told Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid that ‘it's a very desperate situation’ and that doctors are no longer keeping Mr Draper in a coma but ‘he sort of can't wake-up’.

The presenter said it was ‘really emotional’ to be back and ‘like coming out of a little bubble of sadness’.

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TV presenter Kate Garraway has revealed that her husband may never fully recover...

She said: ‘It's a strange word 'coma'. He was induced into the coma... as a way of resting the lungs...

‘Of course, now they're no longer keeping him in the coma and he sort of can't wake-up....

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‘Wonderfully his eyes are opening but we have no real knowledge of what he can see and feel and hear.’

Morgan said reports of Mr Draper coming out of a coma had too much of a ‘positive’ spin.

Garraway said the fact Mr Draper is still alive offers ‘fantastic hope’, adding: ‘The doctors keep saying it is a miracle that he's still alive.’

But they also told her that ‘he's as sick as anyone’ they have ‘ever seen in 35 years of medicine, never mind Covid, and some of those people that were as sick as him aren't here’.

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She said: ‘Six times they've said he's not going to make it... So he has been very, very sick. The problem is it's a new disease that nobody knows.’

She added: ‘It's great that there are some flickers of hope. His lungs are starting to recover a little bit, his kidneys are doing better his liver is doing better but they don't know how much better it can get.

‘They don't know how much better he can get and there's just nothing to compare it with.’

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And she said there was ‘no explanation’ for the severity of his condition, adding: ‘He was a little bit overweight. I'm a little bit of a feeder" but there are "zero underlying conditions’.

She and Mr Draper planned to renew their wedding vows before he became ill.

Garraway announced she would be back presenting Good Morning Britain on July 13.

Garraway said the couple's children have ‘effectively... lost their dad’.

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She said: ‘They haven't, he's there" but she added: "He's not a presence as he should be in their lives....

‘We hope and believe he can come back to us,’ she said.

She told the presenters she has a text from her husband on her phone after he was admitted to hospital, saying: ‘I'm definitely not going to die. I'm doing better. Show this picture of me to the children.’

She said: ‘There was a feeling of obviously terror and then suddenly it escalated... and then suddenly it became everything.

‘Each day it's been a new terror. Just when I thought we were moving forward, we now know it can affect your body everywhere.’

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She added of NHS treatment: ‘They've changed pathways because of Derek, which is a wonderful thing. I think he would be very pleased about that.

‘Also as a wife, it's infuriating that he had to be the one that did it.’

She tells her husband, on FaceTime: ‘We are going to go to the Maldives!" but the doctors tell her, "Maybe don't book a ticket. Positive thinking, but don't hand over the cash just yet’.

Garraway added: ‘We'll never give up and I know the NHS will never give up.’

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