Long Covid victim year 5, Spence seeks help to stay afloat
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Who is Spence?
If you know me, or knew me, it would be as Spence. If you don’t, I still need your help! I’ve lived in London more than 30 years, native of north-east England. I’m single and 58 in July. I’ve been a corporate business operations manager for more than 20 years: The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO, the first UNIX) and Tarantella; Symbol Technologies (now Zebra) then to Cisco Systems. In 2011, partly to preserve health, I transitioned back to archaeology.
That’s a big shift as we’re paid not much above minimum salary! Yet I could tread water as self-employed. From knowing nobody I’ve built a sound reputation, and been published, in community and commercial projects, as well as specialist research.
That day in 2020
The world, my life changed, in early 2020, wave 1 of SARS-CoV-2 (Covid 19). We knew early on that something dreadful was arriving. In April, the 15th, a young lady with a fever, she looked desperately unwell, coughed in my face at the local store. This was before masks and only the beginnings of token distancing. I knew. I spent two weeks in bed, paramedics and a police constable half way through who said “you probably should be dead”. My blood pressure was, by then, “lethal” but I could still catch a breath sitting upright and medicines kept me going. You start to feel a bit better, but it’s a con.
Long Covid is a car crash
Today, around 1-in-10 people, and especially in wave 1 which was a year before vaccines, have succumbed to the post-viral Long Covid ‘syndrome’. Four years later, medical research is beginning to unravel how the virus has caused, even continues to cause, catastrophic damage.
That includes viral persistence. Even if original infection was ‘mild to moderate’, the sequelae myriad of damage, head to toes, is there if the medics look. The list is long and, like ME-CFS or Chronic Lymes, if not MS, has multiple physiological tracks affecting vascular, respiratory, immune, mitochondrial (our energy & oxygen cells), cognitive. Referral to a hospital clinic took two years for a full-day medical review, tests and CT-scans proved lung damage (COPD), limping organs, inflammation everywhere, and the cognitive symptoms. ‘Brainfog’ doesn’t come close to describing the erosion of abilities from simple reading, comprehension, verbal communication - like being concussed every day. I couldn’t string words together in the first year, and it’s still a challenge. Any attempts at ‘paced exercise’ are devastating, and the impacts are cumulative. The term ‘post-exertional malaise’ (PEM) again doesn’t come close. I fall over in the shower (and so just sink-wash), brushing teeth, housework? I sleep on towels under a waffle blanket. It’s subsisting on 1% battery.
I’m immune-compromised. I can barely walk, severe joint pain. I fall over frequently, six times since Christmas, knees give way, dizzy and vertigo (tachycardia), sprained knees. Driving a car, if I still had one, would be crazy. I’m housebound and now mostly bedbound. Another infection might kill me. There are presently no treatments and no cure.
Life turns upside down, you drown
And I have no income. My life-savings will be gone by end of summer. I’ve been living off those to stay afloat. There’s a tiny pension pot left (government tax 75% of it) and a mortgage to pay off next Easter. I am seeking financial advice with few options. The Bank has no solutions until D-Day, they just delay (and bill you for) a brief extension to house repossession. Equity release may be an option but just defers the inevitable for a short time, and is extremely expensive. I’m in talks. There is no government help - they are all in denial when (UK) more than 2 million people are affected.
Seeking help and flotation
I desperately want to stay afloat. I’ve cut all frugal outgoings to a minimum, but you’ll recognize pandemic (and other) consequences. Mortgage has more than quintupled (£77pm to £720). Energy bills trebled. Food inflation.
My initial GFM goal is not small, but would be enough to survive a few months, perhaps until end of year. Mum, age 80, sends me just enough for basic food. My outgoings, except food, are otherwise around £1600pcm. Everything is pretty much switched off. It’s me, a mortgage, a laptop, a limping boiler which leaks, laundry once a month and I never go out. It’s one microwave ready-meal a day.
Can you help me, great or small, to stay afloat?
Any currency can be used: £, Euro, $
I am swallowing pride and humbly grateful if you can - every penny counts. I never thought I’d reach this point in my entire life.
Please also share this plea everywhere you can: https://gofund.me/fdd87808
Thank you
Spence
Organizer
Spencer Carter
Organizer
England