Kate Garraway presents 'Best Nurse Award' at Who Cares Wins
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Kate Garraway, 53, has shared what she didn’t want to show about her family’s turmoil in the highly-emotional ITV documentary Finding Derek. The one-off programme, which won a BAFTA at this year’s awards ceremony, allowed viewers a raw insight into the devastation Covid can have, after Derek Draper was struck down with the illness in March 2020 and is still suffering the long term affects.
I didn’t want to show him at his most physically devastated and vulnerable
Kate Garraway
Despite leaving the majority of people who watched the doc in tears as Kate shared her family’s nightmare, the Good Morning Britain presenter revealed there was more, but they were parts she wanted to keep private and not show on camera.
While Kate has been in the public eye for many years, Derek kept himself out of the spotlight.
And with that in mind, she admitted she “did agonise over how much to share” in Finding Derek.
But she feels certain that as a mental-health campaigner, her husband would have wanted her to be as honest as she could be about it all.
In a new interview, Kate admitted she held certain images back.
“I didn’t want to show him at his most physically devastated and vulnerable – that was too private,” she explained.
Derek is now in the comfort of his own home, but with 24 hour care.
Nurses are understood to be currently operating on a shift pattern so that he is never left alone.
“It’s not been easy,” Kate sighed.
“Although there are these extraordinary little moments that keep you going, it’s not as though there is something every day taking us forward.
“The doctors believe that there will be a trajectory, but that it’ll be very slow.
“Derek will still sleep for 20 hours a day, for example.”
In order to try and stimulate Derek with normal family activities, Kate and their two children Darcey and Billy, all bring their food into his room and eat it with him.
“[We] play board games to try and encourage him to join in, in any way he can,” she smiled.
“Because the general belief is that as much stimulation as possible is great.”
She added: “But he also needs rest, so it’s about trying to keep that balance right.”
With a long way to go in his recovery, the former lobbyist still can’t respond or communicate in a normal manner but Kate seems optimistic that he’s regaining access to his memories.
“We’re clear now that he does understand everything that I tell him,” she told Piers Morgan’s wife Celia Walden for Stella Magazine, as she explained ge will watch TV and loves listening to music.
“He will also react with a smile or change of facial expression to the kids, so there are moments when you know he’s in there and he has a lot of memory.
Kate recalled as she left for work a few months ago, Derek suddenly asked: “‘New dress?’
“And it was actually, so it’s just about accessing that memory.”
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