‘Covid long forced me to leave my job’ – 07/10/2023 – Health

Three years ago, the first patients to develop long-lasting Covid began to report debilitating symptoms. Recent research suggests that 14% of people with long Covid have lost their jobs since then.

Before the pandemic, Marcus Whitehead had a demanding and enjoyable career in financial services in London. But, after catching coronavirus in 2020, he became too sick to work.

Three years later, although he is physically much better, the mental confusion caused by the long Covid prevents the 55-year-old Briton from returning to work.

Marcus, who lives in Harpenden, in the English countryside, says he has a “sense of loss” at having to retire early and losing his mental agility. “I’m not who I was anymore,” he says.

‘Like being injected with horse tranquilizer’

Marcus had the first symptoms of Covid-19 in April 2020.

“It was a typical case — fever, cough — a bit like the flu. It wasn’t too bad and I managed to get some work done,” he says.

But a few days later the illness hit him “like a ton of bricks” and he felt “crushing, paralyzing fatigue, as if he had been injected with horse tranquilizer”.

Marcus also suffered severe pain in body organs and severe headaches, spending the next three months in bed.

“I was on the couch for another 12 months. For 18 months I didn’t drive and had to use a cane. And since then I haven’t been able to work.”

Marcus was a managing partner at the firm Barnett Waddingham, where he managed a staff of 1,000 people.

He says working with client strategies and managing employees was like balancing “revolving plates.”

“I was juggling dozens of plates a day, and after Covid I turned into this person who could barely hold a single plate, let alone spin dozens of them.”

In 2022, he tried to rejoin work with the company’s support.

“I was able to work for two days, but I went back to bed after a major relapse.”

“It was crushing, when I was so close to going back to work. The first time I put my brain under any kind of pressure, it just gave up on me again.”

Eventually, it became clear that Marcus would have to quit his job and retire a decade earlier than planned.

“I’m very lucky to have regained a lot of my health. But it’s been a pretty dramatic change from what I expected the decade before my mid-sixties to be,” he says.

The personal cost to Marcus has also been felt by other workers and the economy. A March survey of 3,000 people who said they had suffered from Covid for a long time found that 14% of them had lost their jobs for reasons related to the illness.

Of the two million people in the UK who report having long-term Covid, 20% feel significantly limited in their ability to carry out day-to-day activities, according to the Office for National Statistics, Britain’s statistics body.

Claire Hastie is the founder of the charity Long Covid Support, which has over 60,000 members online. She formed the entity after failing to find information or help when trying to recover from the virus.

“A large number of people are no longer able to work, or resume their previous capacity, having to reduce their hours and take on less important positions,” she says.

Claire believes that Marcus’s story shows that there is an urgent need for more long-term Covid research.

“At a time of labor and skills shortages, the long-term Covid impact on the economy is significant,” she says.

In addition to those who have stopped working, “others struggle to keep their jobs, but at enormous cost to their health and ability to do anything else,” he adds.

And the problem is not just limited to those with long Covid, but their families as well. Marcus’ wife, Sue, has also decided to stop working for a while to help him recover.

“I noticed that Marcus’s health was better on the weekends when we were doing things together and I wasn’t working ten hours a day, leaving him to his own devices.”

She believes that resigning from her job as director of an organization was essential to Marcus’s recovery.

Though Marcus still struggles with the mental fog symptom, his health has recently improved.

The couple had to look for solutions on their own, scouring social media for advice, as “the medical profession had no cure and still doesn’t” for the disease.

They say they tried everything to improve their condition. “I felt like a guinea pig. Sometimes I would beg Sue not to find another tentative solution,” he says.

He spent time in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, changed his diet, and took all kinds of pills and supplements—”even resorting to buying medicine from Bangladesh.”

Sue also changed her husband’s diet, getting rid of ultra-processed foods.

But the real change came earlier this year through a program called the Lightning Process, which has been used to treat people with chronic fatigue syndrome.

The program focuses on the interactions between the brain and the body.

“The turnaround [na condição de saúde] it was really dramatic,” says Marcus. “I was already on a good healing curve, but this has given it a new boost.”

“There’s no medical and scientific proof — it’s just my personal experience — but I’ve tried many things that haven’t worked. I feel much better physically now.”

Sue says the couple are now traveling and visiting friends after noticing that Marcus is feeling better.

A spokesperson for the Department for Health and Social Care said the UK was investing £50m (£25m) to better understand the long-term effects of the coronavirus.