Kate: Having Derek home with us is wonderful and also a bit overwhelming
KATE Garraway said yesterday it was “completely overwhelming but also wonderful” to have her husband back home.
Derek Draper, 53, left hospital last week after a year spent battling Covid-19 in intensive care.
TV presenter Kate, also 53, said youngsters Darcy, 15, and Billy, 11, were “absolutely loving” having their dad back at the family home in north London and had been “really helpful”.
But she compared Derek’s arrival to that of a newborn baby. Speaking on Good Morning Britain, she told co-host Susanna Reid: “We sort of feel over the moon and overwhelmed in equal measure.
“I do remember that day when you brought home your firstborn and you had sort of been planning for nine months and then you think, ‘What the heck do we do now?’ It’s a little bit like that feeling.”
She said there was a long way to go to see more of the Derek they love.
Former political adviser Derek was first admitted to hospital with breathing difficulties on March 30 last year and is Britain’s
longest surviving Covid hospital patient.
He was put on a ventilator and spent months in an induced coma.
The virus wreaked havoc on his body, targeting his lungs, heart, kidneys, liver and pancreas.
Solution
He now needs round-theclock care and Kate said the decision to bring him home, while “medical”, also reflected the family’s desire – and his – to stimulate his recovery in a “more normal environment”.
Doctors were looking for a “unique solution” to a “unique situation”, she said.
Kate has taken over Derek’s business and spent thousands adapting the
family home. It’s understood Derek still cannot move or talk unaided and needs a wheelchair.
The garage has been converted into a wet room, a ramp has been installed outside and there is now a lift to the garden.
Physios and speech therapists will work with him.
Kate said: “There are people there for Derek, there is someone there for the children.”
She also revealed that after a year as a single mum, Darcy and Billy had started deferring to their father.
She said: “I’ve noticed a little bit of deferring actually, like, ‘should we check with dad?’ And I’m like…‘hang on a minute, I’m still the boss!’ Though I think Darcy actually is the boss…”