Richard Madeley was quick to comfort Kate Garraway as she returned to Good Morning Britain on Monday.
As the duo opened the latest instalment of the ITV show, Richard asked Kate: "How are things? How are things at home?"
"I'm sorry I dramatically disappeared and haven't been here for three weeks now," Kate replied.
"And it was actually on air on GMB on the 9th of July and Derek had come out of hospital, he's been going in and out of hospital for a while.
"And then he was just really unwell, he'd come out of hospital the day before and I got a phone call from the person looking after him saying, 'right we're really worried'. So I whizzed home and it just sort of went 'boom' from there.
"We called an ambulance, went to A&E and they said he had very severe sepsis, life threatening sepsis," Kate continued.
"So it was really dramatic. Brilliant work by the A&E, absolutely extraordinary, because when you've got sepsis, the big challenge is find the source of infection, quickly and get the right antibiotics and his blood pressure was so low, 50 over 40."
Richard then asked: "And did they find it? Did they find the source?"
Kate replied: "Well by a process of elimination and questions, and a really junior doctor said, 'what did you think it might be?' we knew it wasn't Covid-19 coz we'd tested before he'd left the hospital on the Thursday and I said, 'well I did wonder if it was a urine infection, but weirdly we couldn't get anything for a sample', and they just went: "Kidneys!"
"And it was one of those questions that was so different from all the technical and I said that and it made them look at each other and say: "Kidneys!"
"And unfortunately his kidneys were really badly infected, blocked, and the challenge now is to save them, so that's where we've been for the last three weeks, got the sepsis under control."
"Is he still in hospital?" Richard then asked, as Kate confirmed: "Still in hospital, not in intensive care, waiting for another procedure, looking really good, so fingers crossed on everything. One kidney looking really good, just need to look at the other one and so yeah he's still in high dependency."
Taking Kate's hand, Richard told her: "Well if positive wishes could perform miracles then miracles would be coming your way."
"Thank you, thank you," Kate replied, before adding: "Not clear yet really exactly why he's developed this, probably due to Covid, but that's to come. The important thing is is we're back on the right side of it now."
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV and ITV Hub.
