Kate Garraway is desperately trying to "hold on" to her husband Derek Draper.
Kate Garraway
The TV presenter's 53-year-old husband has been in hospital since March after being diagnosed with Covid-19 and although he is no longer on a ventilator, he is still in intensive care and Kate is trying desperately to help him get well.
She told The Sun newspaper: "We miss Derek every single day, but now I definitely feel like he looks at me, and he knows me.
"I have to believe that, it's what keeps me going. I say to him all the time, 'I know you're in there, Derek . . . and I'm going to get you out'.
"I feel like I'm hanging over a cliff edge, holding on to him, saying, ‘Don't let go, don't let go — I'm going to get you out of this.'
"I sometimes think he's looking back at me and in his Derek way thinking, ‘Well, can you please crack on with it a bit faster'.
"But it's the doctors and nurses, and Derek himself, that are really going to bring him back. They are the heroes in this."
Derek - who is Britain's longest-suffering Covid inpatient - is currently in a form of coma called a PDOC (Prolonged Disorder of Consciousness) but he spoke for the first time recently, when he said the word "pain".
Kate said: "The emotionally challenging thing is that we're waiting now to see what happens next; somehow it's even more agonising now there's been this breakthrough.
"We have greater hope now, but also greater fear of him slipping back. There's no precedent to this virus. Even now no one fully understands it and its long-term effects.
"There is no idea of timescale or any data as to how much he can recover or how long it will take."
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