Kate Garraway‘s new emotional memoir about her husband Derek Draper’s battle with Covid has jumped to the top of the book charts in its first week of sales.
The Good Morning Britain presenter’s, 54, book The Power Of Hope tells in raw detail about Derek’s, 53, ordeal and it has sold 22,394 copies since its release on Thursday.
Kate’s new memoir also pays tribute to ‘the brilliant team of doctors and specialists’ who have looked after Derek and how what they have learnt has helped the treatment of others.
Chart-topping: Kate Garraway’s new emotional memoir, pictured, about her husband Derek Draper’s battle with Covid has jumped to the top of the book charts in its first week of sales
As well as topping the UK Official Top 50 book chart, it has also leapt straight into Amazon’s Most Sold: Non-Fiction chart – knocking Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet off the top spot and leapfrogging Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse.
In the emotional memoir, Kate describes how the toughest experience of her life began in March last year when Derek was taken to hospital with very low oxygen levels.
His condition worsened and he became one of the most stricken patients, remaining in intensive care for a year.
Despite returning home recently, Derek remains seriously ill and doctors say he was the most seriously sick patient to have survived the virus.
Raw detail: The Good Morning Britain presenter’s, 54, book The Power Of Hope tells in raw detail about Derek’s, 53, ordeal and it has sold 22,394 copies since its release on Thursday (pictured together in 2019)
As well as recounting how the illness took hold of their lives, she writes about how she is coping with the uncertainty of their future and how she is supporting their two children – Darcey, 15, and Billy, 11 – through this traumatic time.
Discussing her path to releasing the book, Kate gave a candid interview on Friday, where she attributed her notes to Piers Morgan saying: ‘It was actually Piers Morgan who very early on said “you’ve got to write this down…”
‘And I didn’t, really, because there didn’t seem time to write things down. But he said to just write words that you’ll remember because he said you won’t remember some of these things.’
The mother-of-two added that when her husband first fell ill, she was keeping ‘huge amounts of notes’ of his condition due to how busy staff were.
Wise words: Kate recently revealed she was given advice by Piers Morgan to keep notes of husband Derek’s battle with Covid (pictured together in 2018)
She said: ‘I began to take lots of notes about things like oxygen levels, liver enzymes and everything, so I’ve got this strange sort of medical book.’
Prior to her chat, Piers urged followers to read the book as he took to Twitter to pen: ‘This is such a fantastic book. Powerful, moving, heart-breaking, inspiring, courageous and funny’.
Kate recently revealed that Derek had a rare brain inflammation in an extract from her book, published in Metro.
She explains: ‘This, they told me, was a unique historical event, a one-off splurge of inflammation, and the fact that it showed up in some form on the earlier CT scans from back in April meant it happened right at the start when Derek was first on ECMO [a machine which oxygenates the blood].’
Doctors told Kate: ‘We can’t rule out some kind of recovery, but we can’t rule out him never recovering.’
Meanwhile, Kate recently admitted she feared at one point that Derek – who recently came home after a year in hospital – may never remember her and their two children.
Speaking on This Morning, she said: ‘For me, I just dreaded he wouldn’t remember us, which is rather selfish of me actually. Because I don’t know whether he would’ve been in a better or worse position.
Candid: Kate admitted she feared at one point that Derek – who recently came home after a year in hospital – may never remember her and their kids, Darcey, 15 and Billy, 11 (pictured with her children in 2019)
‘At one point we thought we might be caring for him at home and we’d be strangers. And that’s terrifying for him, and strange for us.
‘But he definitely knows us, and he definitely is pleased to be home, and we’re so glad to have him home.’
Speaking on Lorraine recently, Kate touched upon holding things together and the couple’s relationship now.
Kate said: ‘It’s strange, you think that Derek was his own person, big force of nature, and now everything is so quiet, we have to feed him and help with his medications and do things for him…
‘It’s a different relationship, now I’m thinking that there’s a sort of tenderness, it is love and he feels it back. We’ll hopefully be able to get some balance in that, so he wants to have some pride. He wants to look at his wife.’
Lorraine then gifted Kate with a bunch of flowers, to which she grew emotional and teary and said: ‘Thanks for everyone, you’ve been so wonderful, I’ve been so lucky’.
Heartache: The Good Morning Britain host recently appeared on Lorraine where she spoke of ‘the hope’ she holds for her husband, whose battle with the illness has had life-changing consequences, and how he ‘wants pride’