KATE Garraway has revealed her husband Derek’s brain connectivity has been “terribly affected” by coronavirus.
The broadcaster, 54, has filmed a second documentary, Caring for Derek, about her husband’s continued recovery from the illness.
Speaking about the challenges he is still facing on today’s Good Morning Britain, Kate said: “He’s still terribly affected by Covid. Undoubtedly it’s had an affect, certainly on his brain connection in the body.
“I don’t know about mental well-being, if I’m absolutely honest, because he’s still so affected in terms of communication and mobility.
“I wouldn’t feel qualified to say whether it has had an impact in terms of depression and anxiety. It must be, I would’ve thought.”
Dr Hilary Jones then said the condition is often much more than a respiratory illness, attacking multiple organs in the most serious cases.
Derek, 54, fell ill with Covid in March 2020 and was placed into a medically-induced coma.
He returned home last year after spending 374 days in hospital, but in her new documentary Kate made the frank admission that he is “a stranger” to her now.
A first-look clip at Caring For Derek shows Kate helping her husband in and out of bed using machinery and in other shots Derek can be seen using a wheelchair.
Kate said: “I’m very protective of people seeing him vulnerable, but this is the reality of life for people who are carers.”
Their children, Darcy, 15, and William, 12, are also in the documentary which airs on February 22.
She continued: “The person he is now, in many ways, is a stranger. If we can have a love and he can be a dad to the children in a whole new way, that’s life isn’t it?”
Kate previously opened up about how Derek’s illness has impacted their marriage.
She told You: “I’m not sure that we’ve ever fallen out of love, but I think a new path is emerging, a new way to be in love.
“He puts huge trust in me. He just says, ‘Whatever you think’, which is wonderful, but I do get quite tearful about it. I think, ‘God, I hope I’m worthy of that trust’.
“But I’ve got his back. That is a relationship in itself, isn’t it? How many times do couples have doubts about each other?
“That’s a positive thing to come out of this, to have that certainty of each other. He and I are very close.”
This weekend Kate spoke about her struggles to communicate with Derek.
Asked whether they can have conversations, Kate said: “Not really. It’s hard. I watch him microscopically; I feel like I read every flicker so I ‘get’ him, but you wouldn’t walk into the room and think a conversation was being had.
“But he understands an enormous amount, he just can’t respond.’
She continued: “I don’t think things will ever be the same again, because I don’t think we as a family and he as a human being could go through something like that and not be impacted by it.
“Months in a coma and then this. It’s going to change him, even if it’s only emotionally. We’ve all been through so much. I’m not the same.”
