Kate Garraway has revealed a heartbreaking glimpse into how tough it is to care for her unwell husband Derek Draper around the clock.
The Good Morning Britain host, 56, also said that her spouse, also 56, has just discovered a terrible new disease that causes him to choke and “turn blue.”
Derek still requires full-time care after developing major problems with Covid-19 in 2020.
Kate, who has two children with her husband, stated in a recent interview that a caretaker arrives at 8 a.m. every morning to watch after Derek.
They work a 12-hour shift before being replaced by another caretaker who stays up with Derek until 8 a.m. the next day.
Speaking to The Times, Kate was asked to list her husband’s medical problems and told the outlet: ‘The biggest problem is there are so many unknowns.’
She went on to describe Derek’s choking condition, saying he “can neither breathe in oxygen nor expel carbon dioxide efficiently.”
‘[It’s] slightly poisoning his body all the time,’ Kate shared. ‘He urgently needs respiratory rehab.’
The veteran presenter then spoke about the ‘weird choking condition’ Derek has developed.
‘It happened again just last weekend. For absolutely no reason he just went blue.’
Kate watched ‘terrified’ with her son as Derek’s carers rushed to save him.
Kate described her feelings at the time as ‘just oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’
Derek “sort of vomited,” and the caretakers “high-fived Top Gun-style.”
‘They realised they’d had a close call,’ Kate explained.
Kate frequently speaks about her life as a caretaker for her husband and how his health is developing, and she has published two documentaries on the subject: Finding Derek and Caring for Derek.
She disclosed last month that her husband was held for around an hour in an airport passport scanner designed exclusively for wheelchair users.
Derek now needs a wheelchair and has limited strength in his arms, and his intellect and communication have suffered as a result of the difficulties.
Kate and Derek were returning from the United States, where her husband had been receiving treatment, and the airport was celebrating its ‘success’ of installing a new passport scanner for wheelchair users, since earlier scanners were not broad enough to accommodate them.
‘Heathrow was celebrating, they put in a new wheelchair-width passport scanner,’ she explained on Good Morning Britain in August.
‘Before then you couldn’t get a wheelchair through. They put one in at vast expense, but when it came to do it with Derek – disability has a wide range, he hasn’t got the cognition you’ve got or the strength you’ve got in your upper body – we realised we couldn’t get him into the country.
‘He went forward, the door locked, but the disabled person has to free it and you’re not allowed, because of the border, to do it yourself. So he was stuck in no man’s land, literally between two borders, for an hour or so.
‘So even when conscious effort has been made to make things work, and I wonder if it’s because there aren’t enough disabled people talking about it.’
