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Kate Garraway recalls the ‘devastating’ moment sick husband Derek told her he couldn’t go on

Kate Garraway has recalled the “devastating” moment her sick husband Derek told her he couldn’t go on.

Derek, 53, was hospitalised last March after contracting the coronavirus, but sadly he remains seriously ill.

The former lobbyist has lost eight stone in the past year, suffered liver and pancreas damage, has had kidney failure, and now has holes in his lungs and heart.

In a clip of ITV’s upcoming documentary ‘Finding Derek’, obtained by The Mirror, Kate opened up about a heartbreaking conversation she had with her husband over FaceTime in November.

Derek said: “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.”

Kate asked: “As in die?”, with Derek tearfully responding: “Yes… I don’t know how to cope, I don’t know how to cope.”

Kate, 53, bravely replied: “You don’t know how to cope with it. OK. 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 that I would save you and I’m going to save you, I will find a way, but you just have to hang in there.”

The Good Morning Britain presenter explained: “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.”

Derek has been in hospital since March last year

She told the publication: “I said to him, ‘Just stay with me, I’m going to keep talking to you’. And he was obviously exhausted. Because that’s the other thing, is that the tiniest thing completely exhausts him.”

“Being able to get those words out, for him physically it’s as tough as running three marathons, that’s the way the doctors described it. It takes huge amounts of energy and spirit for him to do that. It’s so huge for his body to be able to get that out. It’s a huge power of spirit actually to be able to speak out in that way.”

“And then he’s sort of done and I was like ‘Close your eyes, I’m still here, I’m not going to go anywhere, I’m going to stay on the line’. All he wants to do is to be with the children, to be with me, to be with his friends and family. He wants to come back more than ever.”

“And it was him saying, ‘I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying. I just don’t know how I can get there’. I think he was at his wits’ end physically and mentally, but thankfully we have moved passed that, and he is fighting on.”

“You feel you 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 okay’. Even if you don’t really know if that’s true.”

“But I just want him to know that, so that when he disappears back down, he’s got some hope there,” Kate said.

“You don’t know how much is emotional, how much is physical, how much is neurological. The long-term effects of coronavirus are still so unknown so there isn’t enough data to accurately predict his recovery.”

Speaking to the cameras, the former I’m A Celeb star admitted: “We started filming this when I didn’t know if he would live the day.. so I’ve got so much to be grateful for and so much to hope for. But God, there is a long way to go.”

“He is still that person that you love, but he will behave differently, and he will be physically different. It will be very tough for us both. But he is Derek, for better or for worse.”

“It may be a rather beautiful thing, I’m trying to look at as a rather beautiful thing. I feel as though we might have to sort of fall in love again.”

Kate Garraway: Finding Derek airs on ITV, Tuesday, March 23 at 9pm.

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