Kate Garraway told to ‘get on with her life and return to work’ by doctors

Kate Garraway has admitted her husband’s doctors have told her she must not put her ‘life on pause’ as her husband Derek Draper continues to battle coronavirus.

The ITV presenter has been advised to ‘get on with her life’ and get back some normality for herself and her two children Darcey, 14, and Billy, 11, while Derek remains in a critical condition.

Kate’s husband has been in hospital since March, and while Kate sparked hope over the weekend by revealing he has awoken from a coma, the star has been told his recovery could take years.   

Kate told Hello!: ‘The doctors have been urging me not to put my life on pause. They’ve told me that I need to go back to work and create a routine in our lives again.

‘The children and Derek are all I’ve thought about and they’re the most important people in my life, but I must create structure and normality for the children, to clean the bath, put the plates in the dishwasher and tidy the house.

‘I also need to get back to work so that I can provide for the children and we can do things together, to make them feel that the light hasn’t gone out of their lives, that there’s hope for the future.’

Kate, who will make an appearance on her ITV show Good Morning Britain on Wednesday, explained that she’s been ‘living at the end of the phone 24/7, waiting for news of Derek.

‘But the doctors have warned that his condition could persist for years so I have to get on with life whilst we are waiting for him to get better.’

Her son Billy starts secondary school in September and doctors have told Kate Derek will still be in hospital then, with COVID-19 leaving his body with ‘damage everywhere’ and new health conditions, including severe diabetes. 

‘My priority is to make the children feel safe, not to let them see me feeling vulnerable in the world where Derek was my rock,’ she explained.   

Kate made a rare appearance on social media on Monday night to share her gratitude for the support she has received, since revealing Derek has awoken from his coma.

Good Morning Britain star Kate, 53, told Hello! Magazine that her beloved spouse, 52, has finally opened his eyes following his ongoing battle with COVID-19, and posted a message to her Instagram followers to reflect.

She was sure to stress that, although a positive step, things remain critical. 

She thanked the publication for ‘helping me to bring you some of my hopes and plans for the future’ and added: ‘The future we are really hoping for – Derek recovering & coming home – is not nearly in sight & very uncertain.

‘But it feels positive to share how we are trying to keep ourselves going as I know so many are dealing with terrible challenges in all sorts of ways as we all try to emerge from these ghastly times, just as we continue to hope Derek can emerge from his minimum state of consciousness.

‘I hope reading this helps in some way. Thank you everyone for your lovely good wishes and for sending me your stories of how you’ve been coping too. I hope that some of the [article] brings some comfort – we’re all in this together.

‘Keep the hope alive and keep moving forwards! [sic]’

Her fellow presenters Susanna Reid, Charlotte Hawkins and Kate Thornton posted caring replies to the message, as well as her I’m A Celebrity… campmate Myles Stephenson and a plethora of supportive fans. 

Kate originally told the publication: ‘We’re keeping positive and doing everything we can to bring him round. The children and I communicate with him every day on FaceTime, while a nurse holds his iPad.

‘I really believe he can hear. When medical staff say, ‘Good morning, Derek!, he sometimes opens his eyes. We and the doctors are doing everything we can so that he can start to recover.’  

Kate will talk to her Good Morning Britain co-stars Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on Wednesday.

The star will make her return to the ITV show to give an update on Derek, Piers confirmed on Monday’s show.

‘We’re going to talk to Kate on Wednesday before we go off for the summer,’ Piers said. 

‘She’s going to have something more to say about this but it’s certainly premature at the moment to think that Derek isn’t in any way out of the woods, sadly, on this and he remains in a very serious critical condition.’

Kate, 53, sparked hope when she revealed on Sunday that Derek, 52, had woken from a coma over 13 weeks after first contracting coronavirus.    

But Piers, 55, insisted that the situation is not as positive as people think and said Derek remains on a ‘very slow and uncertain path’.

Piers said: ‘A few papers are doing a lot of coverage today on our colleague and friend Kate Garraway and the situation involving her husband Derek. 

‘It’s probably not quite as positive a story as the papers perhaps believe and we’ve just got a little clarification from Kate’s representative.’ 

The statement read: ‘These headlines give a level of optimism that may not yet be justified, we hope, as does Kate there will be more evidence of a recovery but it will be a very slow and uncertain path.’ 

Later on in the show, Lorraine Kelly, 60, echoed Piers’s words during a conversation with Dr Hilary Jones, who cautioned that Derek may have to learn to walk and talk again during his long recovery.  

She said: ‘Our Kate Garraway is on the front pages today, there is absolutely a glimmer of hope, there always has been. But a little bit of a note of caution really because it’s slow slow progress.’ 

Dr Hilary added: ‘Absolutely. Kate knows that it’s a long road ahead for Derek, she knows this. And what we also know is that many many people who’ve recovered from COVID-19 have taken a long time to recover and are still recovering. 

‘So it’s quite a chronic illness even when people survive and they’re having to learn to walk again to talk again. So we shouldn’t underestimate.  

‘It’s not just, you go in, you have it, you’re lucky enough to survive and life goes back to normal. It’s not like that. A lot of people have got ongoing disabilities

Lorraine added: ‘She’s had such a tough time. She’s going to be dropping in with us later in the week and I’m really looking forward to seeing that.

‘She’s had such a tough time and she’s been absolutely remarkably.’

Dr Hilary said: ‘And she’s never lost sight of the fact that other people are in similar situations.’      

Derek’s initial admission to hospital happened back in March – with Kate and her family painstakingly waiting for hopeful news ever since. The couple have two children – Darcey, 14, and Billy, 10. 

Kate revealed at the time that the last thing he said to her before he was put in a medically-induced coma, was ‘I love you, you saved my life’. 

Kate recently broke her social media silence to respond to a fan who urged her to ‘keep hanging on’ as her husband remains in intensive care. 

The TV personality had stepped back from all platforms in recent weeks, as her husband’s condition had caused ‘extraordinary damage’.

Kate replied to a follower’s tweet who encouraged her to watch a YouTube video of Australian mountaineer Lincoln Hall who explains the stages of unconsciousness he came back from.  

The fan wrote: ‘Keep going with the messages he is hanging on, for a reason, for you, the kids, he has to come back to you all and he will. 

‘Try to watch the YouTube clip about Lincoln Hall, he explains about the stages of unconsciousness that he came back from. Big hugs xxx’.

Kate typed back: ‘Thanks – will do xxx’. 

The fan had encouraged Kate to watch a video about Hall, who reached the summit of Mount Everest on his second attempt in 2006, miraculously surviving the night at 8,700m on descent, after his family was told he had died. 

Kate’s husband was in a comatose state in intensive care for 12 weeks after contracting coronavirus, before the recent developments.

Former lobbyist Derek is now free of COVID-19, but is suffering from serious residual complications.

The presenter became overcome with emotion during a recent instalment of GMB as she admitted she ‘doesn’t know’ if Derek can recover from the damage COVID-19 has inflicted on his body, and may be in a coma for a year.

Kate said: ‘Well there will be tears, I’ll try to keep them down, he’s still with us, he has fought the most extraordinary battle, the fact that he’s still here and holding on. 

‘I am so grateful that he’s still here, and I’ve got the option of praying while others have lost that.

‘He’s very, very sick and as time goes on, it’s a virus, it’s like a computer virus, the doctors manage one but there seems to be a flicker of hope and other things emerge and they’re fighting that. 

‘It has affected him from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. 

She added: ‘He is now COVID-free, he has tested negative, the fight with the virus is over but it’s wreaked extraordinary damage on his body and we don’t know if he can recover from that.’

Kate previously spoke for the first time about when Derek was admitted, saying: ‘In that first week it looked like he was rallying. But then he was very bad, he couldn’t really speak to me, he could shout things to me on speakerphone. 

‘He was begging me, he said ‘I can’t take this, I feel like I’m suffocating’, he said ‘please let them put me in a coma’ and they didn’t want to do that. On Sunday they said ‘we’re going to put him in a coma as overnight we think we have to do that.”

‘He said: ‘I love you, I’m sorry I have to leave you, you’ve saved my life’. I think he thought I had asked the doctors to put in him in a coma. He said ‘being married to you, the children, you saved my life’.’ 

Derek has previously credited Kate for saving him from depression which started during his career as a political advisor and led to a nervous breakdown and a stint in The Priory in the late 1990s.

Kate and Derek have been married for 14 years, with the former lobbyist cheering his wife on for the duration of her stint on I’m A Celebrity last year.