Kate Garraway revealed that the cause of her husband’s recent return to hospital has been "life-threatening" sepsis.
The TV star has explained how the "challenge now is to save" Derek Draper 's kidneys, who is still in hospital as he awaits another procedure.
Kate returned to Good Morning Britain earlier this morning [August 1], following a three-week absence amid Derek's ongoing health battles.
Co-host Richard Madeley was quick to comfort the mum-of-two upon her return to our TV screens, as he asked her how things were at home following Derek's latest stay in hospital.
Derek, a former lobbyist, contracted Covid in early 2020, and was left critically ill and hospitalised for more than a year.
He returned home in April 2021 but still requires care and assistance, as he struggles to return to full health, and in recent weeks has had to return to hospital.
Speaking this morning, Kate told co-host Richard: "I dramatically disappeared and haven’t been here for three weeks now… We were on air and Derek had come out of hospital, he’s been going in and out of hospital for a while for looking at ways to tackle the damage caused by Covid back in 2020.
"But we haven’t really had any sort of medical eruptions, and then he just was really unwell.
"He’d come out of hospital the day before and (I) got a phone call from the person who was looking after him saying, ‘right, we’re really worried’, so I whizzed home, and it just sort of went ‘boom’ from there."
Derek was taken to hospital where Kate explains they discovered he had "very severe sepsis, life-threatening sepsis".
Sepsis occurs when the body overreacts to an infection and starts to damage the body’s own tissues and organs.
It can be fatal and is famously hard to spot.
Speaking on the ITV show, Katie continued: "So it was really dramatic; brilliant work by the A&E, absolutely extraordinary because when you’ve got sepsis, the big challenge is (to) find the source of infection quickly and get the right antibiotics and his blood pressure was so low…"
The broadcaster went on to add that by a "process of eliminations and questions", and after a junior doctor asking her what she thought the cause may be, she suggested it could be a urine infection.
"I did wonder if it was a urine infection but weirdly, we couldn’t get anything for a sample and they just went ‘kidneys’?" Kate recalled, after revealing her husband contracting Covid for a second time had been ruled out.
"And it was one of those questions that was so different from all the technical, it’s just like ‘what was in your mind?’ and I said that and it made them look at each other (and) say kidneys and unfortunately his kidneys were really badly infected, blocked.
"The challenge now is to save them, so that’s where we’ve been for the last three weeks.
"He’s still in hospital, not in intensive care, waiting for another procedure, looking really good.
"So fingers crossed on everything and particularly one kidney looking really good, just need to look at the other one, and so yeah, he’s still in (a) high dependency (unit)."
Kate added it was "not clear yet really exactly why he’s only developed this, probably due to Covid, but that’s to come. The important thing is, is we’re back on the right side of it now."
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