Kate Garraway has revealed the moment Dr Hilary told Good Morning Britain staff to get her urgent medical care amid fears of a heart attack prior to the breakfast show
Kate Garraway has revealed the scary moment she feared she was having a heart attack as Good Morning Britain staff rushed her to hospital. The 58-year-old presenter has confessed Dr Hilary urged producers on the ITV show to get her immediate medical care as she suffered an episode in November 2022.
The incident occurred in 2022 when Kate was caring for her husband Derek Draper, who was suffering from COVID implications. She has candidly opened up on how much her own health suffered as she dealt with her husband’s health woes.
Describing the “searing chest pain” she felt on the morning when she woke, Kate explained she forced herself to make her way to the studios for the morning show. However, things quickly got worse.
Speaking to the Sun, Kate revealed: “I could barely move, but I forced myself into the car. On the way in, I threw up.
“By the time I arrived at the studio, something was clearly wrong. Dr Hilary told the producers to call an ambulance. Instead of going on air, I was in hospital, wired to machines, with doctors fearing a heart attack.”
Thankfully, Kate’s health issue wasn’t an attack, but was described as a “heart event”. She continued: “The stress of fighting for Derek to get the support he needed along with the physical demands of being a primary carer 24 hours a day was such a strain that my body was feeling the effect.”
She revealed she had also had other signs of her own issues, but had no time to rest. Conditions such her autoimmune thyroid condition has “worsened significantly” she confessed, revealed surgery had looked likely.
Kate has regularly shared the struggle she felt while trying to care for her husband Derek, who died in January 2024 following a cardiac arrest. And she admitted she still has a the “tsunami of sadness” as she often wakes in the middle of night panicking she hasn’t given her husband his medicine.
Kate, who had two children with Derek, held his hands until the very end, she said in a previous interview. She explained at the time that while he was sitting in the ambulance with an oxygen mask on before being rushed to hospital, he spoke to his family one last time. She revealed his one final selfless request.
According to Kate, proud dad Derek told Darcey and Billy: “You’re the best children anyone could ask for. Look after mum, be good for her.” This was the last time Derek saw his two children before going into a coma.
Kate praised her children for the way they dealt with their dad’s sad passing in a chat with Good Morning Britain in February 2024. Kate recalled: “It was one of those stop-the-clock moments, where you want the world to stop. It swamps you. We now have 24 hours, [which] turned out to be more of a month, of fighting on and fighting on, following the prognosis that he won’t make it through. For the children when they heard he won’t make it through, they’ve heard it so many times.
“They were so beautiful, the children, about that. They individually had time with him on his own and Darcey said, ‘If, dad, you can’t do this, it’s okay. Don’t worry about us’. And I had similar conversations, a chance to hold his hand and smell his skin and hold him all the way through, and some people don’t get that.
