Kate Garraway: It'll be tough not seeing my husband on our wedding anniversary
Kate Garraway admitted that she is facing a “tough day” as she prepared to spend her 15th wedding anniversary without husband Derek Draper.
Draper, 53, was hospitalised in March with Covid-19 and is still receiving treatment as he faces a huge battle to recover from the “extraordinary damage” the virus has caused to his body.
Though he is no longer in a coma, the former political advisor has only regained a low level of consciousness.
Speaking on Thursday’s Good Morning Britain, Garraway told her colleague Susanna Reid that she “won’t be able to see” Draper today despite her hopes of a visit, but conceded that it might have been “a bit strange anyway.”
"It's actually Derek and I's wedding anniversary today, unbelievably - 15 years today,” she said.
"What an extraordinary thing. I won't be able to see him today, I kind of hoped I would but it wouldn't work out that way for a visit… But maybe it would be a bit strange anyway.
"So yeah, it's a tough day but he's still here. There's not a huge amount of change."
She added that she was trying to see the positives and to “keep going,” telling Reid: “You have to think, at least he's here with you - you have a flicker and then a bad day but you have just got to keep going, really."
In an interview with You magazine last weekend, Garraway said that the “sadness” and “heartbreak” of Draper’s ongoing illness are constantly “wearing” and revealed that she does not get to visit her husband “as often as I’d wish.”
“Every issue I’m dealing with I automatically think, 'Oh, I’ll check with Derek' and then realise I can’t,” she said.
Kate Garraway heartbreak: GMB host opens up on Derek's 'challenging' birthday
"There’s always this sadness. That and the heartbreak are the most wearing things.
"I see him quite infrequently, not as often as I’d wish."
She added: "If someone said to you, 'This is just a short-term period, you are going to get through it, then everything will get back to normal,' you’d have such a burst of energy.
"But it’s the same for anyone living with a loved one with Covid, it’s all an unknown. It grinds you down.”
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays from 6am on ITV.
