Kate Garraway had a near-heart attack moments before she was set to present Good Morning Britain.
In her new book, The Strength of Love: Embracing an Uncertain Future with Resilience and Optimism, the mother-of-two details the stress of her ongoing caring for husband Derek Draper, 56, who has suffered serious health problems ever since contracting Covid in 2020.
In it, she shares the struggle of balancing her high-profile TV career with money concerns and trying to hold things together for her and Draper’s two children: Darcey, 17, and Billy, 14.
But she also reveals her own serious health scare: the ITV breakfast show presenter said that last November she woke up at 2am with her arm immobile and severe chest pains, and ended up vomiting on her bedroom floor.
However, she still allowed herself to be driven to the Good Morning Britain studio and prepared to go on air as usual despite her worsening symptoms.
It took a phone call from the show’s Dr Hilary Jones to get her to head straight to hospital.
She told The Sunday Times that she pushed back and said: “I’ll never get back in time to present the show,” to which her editor replied: “You’re not going to do the show.”
She collapsed in the A&E department, where she immediately underwent an ECG and tests that revealed heart attack-related proteins in her blood.
A cardiologist informed her that she wasn’t currently experiencing a heart attack but that there was a definite issue.
When she returned 12 hours later, she was deemed not “strong enough” to have a stressor test to find out more.
The scare followed two and a half years of stress and anxiety for Garraway and her family.
Both she and her husband contracted Covid-19 in the early stages of the pandemic, but while her experience was mild, Draper’s condition was so severe he was hospitalised for a year, placed in a medically-induced coma and is now in a wheelchair.
The virus has led to brain inflammation, kidney failure and significant damage to his liver and pancreas, as well as multiple instances of his heart stopping.
The Strength of Love: Embracing an Uncertain Future with Resilience and Optimism by Kate Garraway is out on Thursday.
