런던 A British TV anchor has opened up about her husband’s harrowing, year-long ordeal with 코로나 19, which has left him hospitalized since last March.
Kate Garraway, a host on ITV’s national breakfast show “좋은 아침 영국,” 그녀가 말했다 “fears the reality” of giving up her job to care full-time for her husband, Derek Draper.
The 53-year-old former lobbyist and political author contracted Covid-19 a year ago and has since suffered organ failure.
In a documentary that aired on ITV on Tuesday, Garraway, 또한 53, detailed the severity of his condition and spoke to others who have experienced serious cases of “long Covid.”
“Derek’s is an extreme case. Unless you are up close to it, you don’t know what it’s like,” she said in the film, “Finding Derek.” “Is he going to be able to come back, or will he be alive, but no longer the person he was?”
The broadcast shone a light on the most severe cases of Covid-19, and the subsequent complications it can cause even in younger people.
“Derek is an extreme case. What he had is what is called a prolonged disorder of consciousness, which means that there is some reaction,” Garraway told the BBC on Tuesday, shortly before the documentary aired.
“You are on this precipice trying to hold on to him and there are moments when he bubbles up and you have some contact, predominantly at the moment on FaceTime because of the Covid restrictions,” 그녀가 말했다.
A number of British TV personalities shared messages of support after the program aired.
Piers Morgan, Garraway’s former co-host on “좋은 아침 영국,” described it as “heartbreaking,” while fellow TV host Lorraine Kelly praised Garraway’s “courage, humanity and strength.”
Garraway was seen preparing her home for Draper’s potential return from hospital, and shared footage of her husband unconscious in the hospital.
“Derek is the sickest person the team of doctors in the lung hospital have treated that’s lived,” Garraway said.
The pair married in 2005 and have two children, who both appeared in the documentary.
In one scene, Garraway tells her 11-year-old son: “You know that we are hoping that dad will get better and better, but when he comes home he will probably need to be in a wheelchair.”
Garraway has co-hosted “좋은 아침 영국” since it debuted in 2014, and has also appeared on British competition shows “Strictly Come Dancing” 과 “I’m A Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here.”
Draper was involved in a 1998 scandal known as Lobbygate, in which he was recorded discussing his close links to the British government as a lobbyist. During the same period, he wrote a book about Tony Blair’s premiership.
Doctors are still attempting to learn more about long Covid, which refers to any bout of the disease that leaves a patient with lingering symptoms for months.
It typically causes persistent fatigue, headaches or “brain fog” for some time after a person stops being infectious. A study published in the journal The Lancet in January found that of 1,733 coronavirus patients treated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, 76% were still experiencing at least one symptom six months after their symptoms began.
그러나 the disease can also attack virtually the entire body, leaving some people with damage to their lungs, kidneys, liver, 심장, brain or nervous system, doctors have found.
A similar, highly publicized case saw Broadway actor Nick Cordero die aged 41 작년, after battling the disease and related complications for more than three months.
