Kate Garraway fears her husband could be trapped in a coma forever.
Derek Draper, 52, was admitted to hospital on March 30, after struggling to breathe due to the coronavirus. Kate has now revealed that doctors have prepared her for the “second worst case scenario”, which is that Derek never wakes up from his coma.
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‘Second worse case scenario’
Speaking to The Sun newspaper, Kate said: “There was a terrible phone call two weeks ago from a senior doctor in the intensive care unit. He asked me what my greatest fear was.
“I said, ‘Derek dying’ and he replied, ‘Well, now I think I have to give you a second worst case scenario, which is that he never changes from this. That he is locked in this forever’.
“He said, ‘I’m not telling you this to scare you. It’s because we don’t know if he can recover. We’ll only know over the coming weeks and months’.
“I threw up, there and then. People had said to me before that they thought he was going to die, but not that he might stay in this state.”
Disease has left serious damage
Although Derek is now COVID-19 free, his body has been ravaged by the disease.
Kate said: “He has damage everywhere, holes in his heart, his liver is impacted, and his pancreas … well, he’s now very, very diabetic which he wasn’t before.
“He’s been on kidney dialysis because his kidneys stopped functioning. And his nerves and his neurology have been affected by the virus, but the impact and the damage of that, they don’t yet know.”
Derek was put into an induced coma in April to allow his body to fight the virus and staff have been trying to bring him out of it for the past three weeks, with no success.
Kate, 53, and their children, Darcey, 14, and Billy, 10, all experienced mild coronavirus symptoms but recovered quickly.
The Good Morning Britain presenter appeared on the programme yesterday to give her first interview since Derek was taken ill.
She told Ben Shepherd Derek’s final words before he went into the coma.
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“He said, ‘I love you but I have to leave you’.
“I said, ‘It’s only for 3 or 4 days, you’re gonna be fine. This is good because this is what you wanted and it will allow you to rest.
“He said, ‘You saved my life. You saved my life and I don’t just mean now, I mean everything, being married and the children.'”
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