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TRIP OF HOPE
Kate Garraway reveals Covid-stricken Derek Draper’s secret 11,000 mile trip to Mexico for cutting-edge medical treatment
KATE Garraway’s Covid-stricken husband Derek Draper secretly flew to Mexico for a ground-breaking medical trial.
The Good Morning Britain star, 54, accompanied him on the 11,000-mile trip, which emerged as Boris Johnson lifted all Covid restrictions.
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Kate said of Derek, also 54, who was admitted to hospital in March 2020: “He is desperate to get better.”
A world-renowned US doctor had contacted her after seeing former spin doctor Derek’s plight on TV, and he underwent treatment at a specialist clinic in Monterrey.
Derek, 54, is due to return there next month for another 28-day stay as doctors continue to monitor his brain, liver and lung function.
For now he remains bed-bound, requiring around-the-clock care after being struck down by the virus in March 2020.
Kate said: “It took weeks and weeks of planning, and when I told Derek about this place he was excited. He is just so desperate to get better - he will do anything he can to make that happen.
“I think actually there’s a huge amount of hope for him to improve. I think the treatment could be positive. I want to be slightly careful about saying too much, because I’m aware everybody will go, ‘What is the trial?’
"And I don’t want to start something, offering up false hope to others who might be in a similar position.
“But I’m just so desperate to be able to give a happy ending — for Derek mainly, but also for everybody who asks me every day how he’s getting on.
“I’m desperate to be able to tell them he’s getting better . . . but of course he’s not out of the woods yet. It’s hard to say how the treatment went so far, as it’s very early in the treatment programme and he will need much more.
“We are also still waiting for final analysis of all the scans, but I like there were a lot of positives.”
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However, one early brain scan showed bright patches of white - something one neurologist said was more usually seen in patients with vascular dementia.
Kate is yet to have an agreed diagnosis because experts still do not fully understand the long-term effects of the virus.
Ahead of their 16-hour transatlantic flight, Derek had to undergo oxygen and pressure tests to check he was able to cope.
Kate, also 54, also had to employ a specialist travel nurse to ensure his safety. She said: “He was quite a nervous flyer anyway. So you can imagine how draining and overwhelming this must have been for him.
"But he was amazing, and was aware of what was going on the whole time. I’m so proud of him.”
News of the latest development will be shown in a new ITV documentary Caring For Derek - a follow-up to Kate’s award-winning Finding Derek.
Viewers will again see the toll placed on the couple by his crippling illness.
He appears to have complete cognitive function - but is largely “locked-in” and unable to express himself clearly, which is “incredibly frustrating and upsetting” for him.
Derek may never walk again because the tendons and muscles in his legs have seized up. He sleeps between 16 and 20 hours a day, while Kate is surviving on barely a quarter of that. She often gets up every two hours at night to help the carer move him, and she washes and changes his bed linen seven times a day.
She has rented a hyperbaric oxygen tank - as used by tennis ace Novak Djokovic - in the hope it will help restore Derek’s severely damaged lung function.
Kate is also desperate to try hydrotherapy for him, but many centres closed during the pandemic.
'FRUSTRATING & UPSETTING'
Derek, who is unable to talk beyond a faint whisper and struggles to speak more than one or two words at any given time, is shown going to the bathroom in the show. It was the first time he was able to go to the loo outside of his bed.
Kate said: “What is heartbreaking is that this is progress, him using the commode without me, that’s an achievement. He cried afterwards, partly because he’s pleased, but also, I think, it’s a case of, ‘Christ, is that where we are?’
“But we have to celebrate the tiny things because they are big things - they mean progress.”
On the day we meet, in a pub near her North London home, Kate is shattered. She repeatedly apologises for the “state” of her chipped polish fingernails, with manicures understandably low on her priorities.
As well as looking after her husband of 16 years, professionally Kate has also never been busier.
She is up at 3.15am twice weekly to host Good Morning Britain, she fronts a daily show on Smooth Radio and recently took over from Piers Morgan on Life Stories.
Kate, who received an MBE for services to broadcasting, journalism and charity in the New Year Honours, is also about to launch an augmented reality medical series for the BBC.
The mum of two admits she feels lonely in the wake of Derek’s illness, while he confronts his own reality daily.
She says: “It’s like there’s both grief and hope in the same moment. There are flashes of the old Derek and then he disappears again, and you’re left just feeling really lonely.
“Derek dreams about the ‘before’, and every morning it’s just so, so awful seeing him wake up, and the realisation of where he is.
“There’s a kind of heartbreak in his eyes, every single morning. You can just see it. It reminds me of when you’d have a horrible break-up and wake up in the morning, feeling all right - and then that sort of sucker punch of remembering.”
'HEARTBREAK IN HIS EYES'
One-time political lobbyist Derek has told Kate his dream is to work again one day but she sighs: “I don’t know if that’s realistic.”
She added: “Derek was a big, and I mean BIG, eater, forever with a glass of red wine. Now he doesn’t really express hunger. Comparing him to before is very strange - he is just so different. It’s almost like living with a stranger.”
In the show, viewers will see Derek request some prawn cocktail crisps and a ham sandwich - a rare flash of the Before Derek.
He is also able to use an iPad - “although he hasn’t been reading any of the coverage about himself” - and has re-watched all of Game Of Thrones.
A one-time voracious reader, he has finished just one book in two years - Payday, the debut thriller by Piers’ wife Celia Walden.
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Kate smiles: “We had quite a long chat about the book, it was the most engaged he had been in a long time. It was great. So there are these moments of normality, and hope. It’s these I cherish.”
- CARING For Derek airs tonight on ITV1 at 9pm.
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