Kate Garraway has spoken about the moment her husband Derek Draper believed he was about to die.
The Good Morning Britain presenter, 55, discussed Derek’s brush with death, as the former political lobbyist, 55, contracted sepsis last summer.
According to The Sun, Derek’s illness was so severe, he was taken to intensive care, where he was “just minutes from death”.
It was at that point he confessed to Kate that he “was gone”.
She said: “His sepsis was gut-wrenching for all of us because it had gone undiagnosed until the point where it was about to take his life away again.
“At one point Derek said to me, ‘This is it, this time. I am gone.’ It was just terrifying."
The past few years have been an emotional rollercoaster for Kate and her family, with Derek contracting Covid-19 at the start of the pandemic, which saw him being rushed to hospital in March 2020.
Immediately, medics decided the treatment plan for Derek would involve him being put on a ventilator and put into an induced coma.
Derek’s stay in hospital lasted 13 months, with Kate and their children, Darcey, 16, and Billy, 13, unable to visit him for parts of the duration, due to the Covid rules that were in place at the time.
However, having been hospitalised for such a long period of time, his body was left weakened following his fight with Covid, leading to him suffering various ailments.
Derek has been left unable to walk and is now confined to a bed and a wheelchair.
It was last summer that things took a turn for the worse, with Derek being diagnosed with a kidney infection in July.
The infection developed life-threatening complications, leading to sepsis.
He was admitted to intensive care as medics fought to save his life for three weeks.
Derek managed to pull through and was moved to a High Dependency Unit for some time, before being able to go home.
An award-winning documentary, Caring for Derek, was broadcast on ITV in order to show the level of care required for Derek, including insights into Kate and Derek’s family life and Derek’s journey after contracting Covid-19.
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