KATE Garraway has revealed her long-suffering husband Derek Draper can finally breathe on his own after seven months in intensive care.
As 53-year-old Derek fought tirelessly against coronavirus, his lungs, heart, kidneys, liver and pancreas were all ravaged by the horror illness.
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He was fitted with a tracheostomy as his lungs struggled to cope, but now Kate says there’s been improvement after he said his first word after 214 days in hospital.
“There is no idea of timescale or any data as to how much he can recover or how long it will take,”
“But the other significant change is that they’ve been able to remove his tracheotomy tube — which is very positive as it means his lungs have started to work and aren’t solid as they were before. But he still has a long way to go.”
There is still no long-term prognosis for recovery and doctors can’t say with any certainty how much further Derek will recover after being “universally affected” .
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He has also been confirmed as type one diabetic – despite not having diabetes before covid.
The loving dad to the couple’s two children, Darcey, 14, and Billy, 11, also remains in a form of coma called a PDOC (Prolonged Disorder of Consciousness).
Kate says she she feels like she’s hanging over a cliff-edge yelling “don’t let go” as she attempts to pull Derek back after his breakthrough.
“We miss Derek every single day, but now I definitely feel like he looks at me, and he knows me,” says Kate.
“I have to believe that, it’s what keeps me going. “I say to him all the time, ‘I know you’re in there, Derek . . . and I’m going to get you out’.
“I feel like I’m hanging over a cliff edge, holding on to him, saying, ‘Don’t let go, don’t let go — I’m going to get you out of this.’
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“I sometimes think he’s looking back at me and in his Derek way thinking, ‘Well, can you please crack on with it a bit faster’.
“But it’s the doctors and nurses, and Derek himself, that are really going to bring him back. They are the heroes in this.”
Derek was admitted to hospital on March 30, and is Britain’s longest-suffering Covid inpatient.
