Kate Garraway hugs a nurse who cared for her husband Derek Draper
(Picture: ITV)Kate Garraway fought back tears on Friday as she hugged a nurse who cared for her husband Derek Draper.
Beth Dixon appeared on Good Morning Britain to speak about her experience caring for best-selling author Michael Rosen.
During the interview, Mrs Garraway revealed that Rosen was in the same ward as her husband Derek Draper, who was being treated for Covid at the same time.
She said: “Michael was on the same ward as my husband, Derek, which we only found out, because you told me, Michael.
“Neither Derek or Michael were conscious at the time and none of us as wives and children and uncles of people who were sick could go in, and we had no sense of what was happening.”
After Ms Dixon confirmed she also cared for Mr Draper, Garraway said: “That is amazing, thank you so much.
“I don’t know whether I can leap up and hug you but I’m going to.
“I’m quite overwhelmed as I’ve not seen the faces of anyone from that time so it’s lovely.”
Garraway has previously revealed the extent of her husband’s illness and she says he is still unable to communicate after Covid-19 caused brain inflammation.
She said the “inflammation passed through” his brain making him one of the worst-affected living Covid patients in the UK.
On the ITV show, author Rosen also grew emotional as he met the nurse who cared for him while he was in a coma.
The former children’s laureate is still suffering from the after-effects of the illness and has lost sight in one eye and hearing in one ear as a result of microbleeds.
Ms Dixon kept a diary of his care and he looked surprised to meet her on the show.
He said: “I was totally out of it in an induced coma and there are no memories in my brain of things that went on. In fact, the days after I supposedly came out of the coma, the doctors, nurses were talking to me and I have got no memory of that either.”
Of the diary, he said: “To start off with I couldn’t bear to look at it. My wife Emma had it sitting on the table and she said: ‘There’s your patient diary’, and I wouldn’t and couldn’t read it. I don’t know why.
“I just sort of looked at the cover of it. And then, bit by bit, I came to read it.”
After meeting the nurse, he told her: “That’s amazing, thank you, that’s all I can say.”
He added: “It’s disorienting, there’s this period of my life that is lost but you know about it.
“That’s what’s great (about the diary), because it’s like watching a movie of yourself.”
Rosen read an extract from the diary in which Ms Dixon revealed the author wrote her favourite book We’re Going On A Bear Hunt.
He said: “It’s difficult, it really is, because I can’t come to terms with how people care for you.
“The only way I can think of is like the way we as parents care for our children, and here’s this young woman caring for an old geezer like me, as if she’s my parent.
“I can’t even imagine it, all the care that you did. There’s nurses in the diary saying: ‘We held your hand and you squeezed my hand,’ I think: ‘Why did you hold my hand? You’re a nurse, you don’t have to hold my hand, I’m unconscious,’ and it’s just that level of care.”
