MY HEART GOES OUT TO KATE

Kate Garraway has revealed that doctors told her her husband Derek Draper wasn’t going to make it “six times”. She said that while Derek can now open his eyes, the doctors aren’t sure how much better he can get and there is a long road ahead. Over these last few months I’ve thought about Kate a lot and my heart really goes out to her. Unless you’ve been in intensive care or you’ve seen patients in that situation, it’s very hard to explain to people what it’s actually like.

It’s not surprising that it could take Derek a long time to recover. It’s easy to underestimate the impact of being in intensive care, even for a young and healthy person. For every day spent in ITU it takes many days of recovery once you leave, so for someone who has had a long stay it could be many months. Some people never fully recover, sadly, particularly if they’re elderly or if they have other health conditions. It’s a massive ordeal for your body to go through, and over time patients lose a lot of muscle bulk and become very weak. If they have been on a ventilator for a prolonged period of time their breathing muscles also become weaker, so it can take time to build the strength again to breathe on your own.

Another thing that can happen to patients who’ve been in intensive care is post-traumatic stress disorder. It can be really traumatising with all the noises, machines and tubes, and people sometimes need therapy after they leave. We still don’t fully understand why some people get so much sicker after contracting coronavirus than others, so more research needs to be done into this.