2023-07-11 03:11:35
image copyrightMarcus Whitehead
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Marcus Whitehead
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Three years ago, the first patients with what is known as long-term COVID were reporting symptoms that left them with severe physical weakness. A recent survey found that 14 percent of people who have this disease have lost their jobs.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Marcus Whitehead was working in a high-profile, mentally demanding position in the London financial services sector. However, following contracting the Corona virus in 2020, his health condition deteriorated to the point that he was unable to work.
Three years later, despite the improvement in his physical health, what is known as “brain fog” prevented the 55-year-old Marcus from returning to work.
Marcus says he has a “feeling of a loss” due to retiring from work at a young age and losing his mental stimulation, adding that he has become a different person.
“It’s like I was injected with horse anesthesia.”
Marcus developed symptoms of COVID-19 in April 2020.
“The usual symptoms of corona – high temperature, cough – were like the flu. It wasn’t very severe, as I was able to work a little bit,” he says.
But following a few days, his health worsened and he felt as if “a ton of stones” had been thrown at him, and he began to feel “an overwhelming fatigue paralyzing me, as if I had been injected with the drug given to horses”.
Marcus began to suffer from “severe pains in his internal organs and severe headaches, and he spent the next three months lying on his bed.
image copyrightMarcus Whitehead
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Marcus managed to attend his daughter’s wedding, leaning on a cane, but later suffered a health setback
“I spent the next 12 months sitting on the couch. For 18 months, I mightn’t drive and had to lean on a cane to walk. I haven’t been able to go back to work since.”
Marcus was a Managing Partner at Barnett Waddingham, a financial risk analysis and management firm, where he oversaw 1,000 employees.
Marcus likens the job of coordinating customer strategy and employee support to a game of “spin the dishes.”
“I was balancing dozens of dishes daily, but following Covid, I turned into a person who might barely carry one dish, let alone rotate dozens of dishes.”
In 2022, he attempts to return to work with the support of his company. “I was able to work for two days and then go back to bed following a major health setback,” he says.
“It was demoralizing, now that I’m so close to going back to work. It was the first time I put my brain to this kind of pressure, but it failed me once more.”
image copyrightBarnett Waddingham
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Marcus presiding over a conference at which politician Ken Clarke spoke
Eventually, it became clear that Marcus would have to quit his mentally demanding job, and decided to retire 10 years earlier than he had intended.
“I’m very fortunate to have made a big part of my recovery,” he says. “But it was a dramatic change from what I would have expected during this decade prior to my early 60s.”
The cost to Marcos on a personal level was not limited to him, as there are many others who have gone through similar experiences, which affected the economy of the country as a whole. A survey conducted last March showed that 14 percent of the 3,000 people with long-term Covid who were surveyed lost their jobs for reasons related to their health condition.
Of the two million people in the UK who say they have long-term COVID-19, 20% feel their ability to carry out daily activities is significantly limited, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Claire Hasty is a founding member of Long Covid Support, whose online support group has now reached 60,000 members. Claire founded the organization following finding it very difficult to get any information or help when she herself fell ill.
“There are huge numbers of people who can no longer work at all, or at the same capacity they used to, and have had to work fewer hours or take on smaller roles,” she says.
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Claire Hasty started a support group on Facebook following she and her children developed severe symptoms
Claire sees Marcus’ story as highlighting the urgent need for “urgent research” on this “devastating condition”.
“At a time when there is a shortage of labor and skills, the impact of long-term Covid on the economy is very significant,” she says.
She adds that in addition to those who have stopped working, there are “others who are struggling to keep their jobs but are paying a heavy price with their health and their ability to do anything else.”
And it’s not just those with long-term COVID-19, but their families as well. Marcus’s wife, Sue, also decided to take a break from work to help him recover.
“I found out that Marcus’s health is better on the weekends, when we do things together and when I don’t spend 10 hours a day on my work and leave him alone.”
Sue believes that giving up her job as a program manager for a local authority was the secret to his early recovery.
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Marcus and Sue plan to take tourist trips to help Marcus recover
Although Marcus still suffers from brain fog, his physical health has recently improved.
The couple was forced to search for solutions, so they started scouring social media for help, because “the medical profession did not provide any treatment and the situation is still the same until now.”
So, the two tried anything and everything to improve Marcus’ health. “I felt like a guinea pig. Sometimes I would beg Sue not to suggest trying another solution.”
Marcus spent time in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, changed his diet, took different types of medication and nutritional supplements – “we even resorted to buying medicine from Bangladesh”.
Su has also been working on pacing his energy levels, which has led to some improvement, as well as sticking to an “exceptionally good diet” devoid of any processed foods.
But the real change happened earlier this year, through a program called the “lightning process”, which is not approved by the British National Health Service but is used to treat people with chronic fatigue syndrome.
The privately funded program focuses on brain-body interactions.
“The improvement was quite significant,” says Marcus. “I was already starting to recover, but… [البرنامج] Reinforce that.
“There is no medical scientific evidence – it’s just my personal experience – but I’ve tried a lot of things that didn’t work, and now I feel much better physically.”
Sue says she and her husband spend time traveling and visiting friends following noticing Marcus’s health improve when they traveled one time.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care says the department has allocated £50m for scientific research to better understand the long-term effects of coronavirus infection.
“We know that long-term COVID-19 has devastating effects on physical and mental health. We have invested £314m to create specialist services across England that will direct people with long-term COVID-19 to appropriate treatment and rehabilitation services, including services Occupational health.
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