Kate Garraway shares an update about husband Derek Draper as she confirms she's returning to GMB
Kate Garraway has announced that she is returning to Good Morning Britain.
Joining Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid in the studio, Kate said: "I’m going to come back. I’m going to come back on Monday. I’m with Ben Shephard. I just thought come on Garraway! Derek would be incensed with me. I have got to get on and do the things I’m good at."
Having been wrestling with the idea of returning to work, Kate explained that the doctors advised her to return to work.
"The doctors have said you’ve got to get on and do that. They’ve been worried about me....I’ve been trying to do everything and try to keep everything going and I’ve had support."
“I couldn’t have done anything [before this]. I’ve literally been 24 hours a day researching everything, talking to people all around the world, trying to get the best care, which he has got. The NHS are extraordinary. The people working with him have been amazing. The hours and the days that they’re giving, not just to Derek, to everybody is unbelievable. It is their work, it’s not a miracle, although we do thank you a little bit God that he’s still here, but it is their brilliance," she added.
Announcing her return to work, she said: “I’ve got to get going, I’ve got to come back. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m Mother Teresa or anything, everyone’s having to do that, I’m not special or different, everyone’s having to get on with sadness and loss. If I come back we’ll all be in the same boat.”
Kate also explained that Derek would have wanted her to return to work.
"Derek would not just be saying come back, he’d be saying, why haven’t you done it before? As he got into the ambulance he said, ‘Go inside and make them feel safe, because they’re going to be panicking about this.’ That would be his priority. My job is to make him feel safe and make them feel that they have a future and a world and whatever happens with Derek – we hope and believe he can come back to us – but whatever happens, they have to feel they have a world. To see me getting on, they’re going to go back to school in September.”
Members of the GMB family shared their support of Kate online with Laura Tobin, Ben Shephard, Jonathan Swain, Charlotte Hawkins and many more taking to Twitter to praise her.
Kate also shared an update about her husband. She said: "About him and the coma for starters, it’s a strange word coma, he was induced into the coma because it was a way of resting the lungs when he had very acute Covid, of course now they’re no longer keeping him in the Coma, he sort of can’t wake up. There’s two types of coma – there’s the one we think of as vegetative coma, where someone’s completely unconscious, you know, you could stab them and they wouldn’t react - and there’s where Derek is which is a minimum state of consciousness. So, wonderfully his eyes are opening but we have no real knowledge of what he can see or hear and feel."
"It is a very desperate situation, it’s very difficult. Of course, there’s fantastic hope that he’s still alive. The doctors do keep saying it is a miracle he’s still alive. [A doctor who has been treating him] said, 'He’s as sick as anyone I’ve ever seen in 35 years in medicine, never mind Covid'. So six times they said he’s not going to make it. He’s been very, very sick. The problem is, is that it’s a new disease which nobody knows, so there’s no data. So what they can say to me is, 'It’s great that he’s here, 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. They don’t know how much better he can get. There is just nothing he can compare it with," Kate went on to explain.
Of it being 100 days since Derek was taken so ill Kate said: “I think there’s been so many different stages. When he went into hospital, I’ve got some texts from him saying, ‘I’m definitely not going to die, I’m getting better, show this picture to the children, tell them I’m doing great…’ there was a feeling of terror and then suddenly it escalated and they were saying it’s all about the lungs… and then suddenly it became everything, kidney fail, liver fail, heart, everything...Each stage it’s been a new terror and just when I thought we were moving forward then suddenly we know it can affect your body everywhere, nerves, everything."
Kate added: "You say I’ve been strong, I have had moments when you get absolutely gripped with fear. Everything was going so well, notes from him saying ‘this is our year’.. ...But it’s happened to the world, hasn’t it? And not just from Covid. I know people, you know people who have been diagnosed with terrible illness, who’ve had terrible accidents…”
During the interview, Kate also praised the NHS for the work they do.
"The actual medical treatment. If you think of them trying to balance everything. It’s unbelievable and I'm not sure any other country could do it as well. The NHS is vital. It’s amazing. I just think those people are human."
"We'll never give up and I know the NHS will never give up," she added.