TV presenter Kate Garraway spoke of her husband's brave battle with Covid last night ahead of a new documentary.
Last March Derek Draper, 55, was admitted to a medical centre with coronavirus symptoms and put in an induced coma.
Though he is now Covid free he is fighting to restore his mental health.
Kate was speaking on The One Show about her up-and-coming documentary Finding Derek, The Mirror reports.
In the documentary Kate talks about how her family has been forced to adjust to a new way of life and meets others who have been suffering because of Covid.
She said: "Derek is an extreme case. What he had is what is called a prolonged disorder of consciousness which means that there is some reaction.
"He is somebody who both in this time before I knew him when he was in politics and also since in all the work he has done in mental health because that’s his thing now.
"His brain has always been his best friend and he's lived on his wit and now suddenly his brain - as we all know controls his body - is no longer his friend and he's fighting to get out."
After almost two months doctors took Derek out of the coma but he failed to regain consciousness
Mum-of-two Kate explained the virus "attacked everything" and left him with clots in his lungs, holes in his heart and made him diabetic. He's also undergone a tracheotomy.
Kate said: "It is not like the coma we see in movies where people are lying in a vegetative state. He can open his eyes and before Christmas there was a lot of progress with words and communication and things
"But what I feel like is that I am on a lifeboat somehow and he is coming up and down. Sorry, this sounds very figurative but that is how it feels.
"You are on this precipice trying to hold on to him and there are moments when he bubbles up and you have some contact, predominantly at the moment on FaceTime because of the Covid restrictions."
Finding Derek airs on ITV at 9pm on March 23.
