Excellent Video and Article by Sky News on Long Covid with Dr Charles Shepherd, Medical Advisor to the ME Association

[Countrygirl]

This is an excellent 15-minute video and article on Long Covid by Sky News that includes an interview with Dr Charles Shepherd of the ME Association.


https://news.sky.com/story/how-long...u0y22Xq03bj9V-s241ldFPBs2eg4pUW50-lzQTkCxmD6A

How long COVID ruined my life, from crushing fatigue to brain fog
Sky's technology correspondent Rowland Manthorpe has suffered with long COVID for more than 18 months, and documented his continued struggle.

Rowland Manthorpe
Technology correspondent @rowlsmanthorpe

To get one thing clear at the start: I've never done a triathlon. I've never climbed a mountain or swum the Channel. I've never been on a hiking holiday.

Why am I telling you this? Because normally articles about long COVID start by describing the physical feats that sufferers are no longer able to perform.


Look, the writers say. Once, these people were so healthy they ran ultra-marathons in their spare time. Now they can barely make it to the shops.

It's not wrong exactly, but to me it always struck a false note, because when long COVID is leeching my energy, it's not the big things I miss, it's everything else.

Energy to read or watch a show on TV. Energy to make plans and see them through, or be spontaneous. Energy to spend time peacefully with people you love. Energy to feel anything that isn't crushing fatigue.

I recently met a teenager called Victoria, who came down with long COVID fifteen months ago, shortly before her twelfth birthday. In a tiny voice she said: "I didn't get to be 12. I didn't get to be 13 either. I just hope I get to be 14.”

What do you miss the most? I asked her. Victoria gave a miserable shrug. "Life," she replied.

Long COVID is an incredibly diverse condition and in many ways my experience was very different to Victoria's - yet with that one word she summed it up perfectly.

I found an answer when I spoke to Dr Charles Shepherd, honorary medical adviser to the ME Association. In the late 1970s, he was a fit young doctor in his early thirties working long days in Cirencester Hospital, when he caught chickenpox from a patient. The chickenpox went away, but Dr Shepherd never recovered. Instead, he was left with "activity induced fatigue, brain fog, problems with short term memory, concentration, attention span, processing information", a condition eventually diagnosed as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).