Yeah, I've got it. Hi, I'm Stuart Bradley. I'm the ex MD of Trust Brand Communications, the ex CEO of Culture Shift and also the ex president of the Stockport chamber. Having covid really knocked the wind out of my sails. But I was belligerent, determined owner manager I worked through it, carried on even though I had brain fog, the fatigue, that the inability to almost trust my own judgement when it came to decision making. My name is Tina Betts. I'm a physiotherapist and I'm presently the service lead for the Long Covid Assessment Clinic based here in Romiley. Long Covid is a cluster of symptoms that persist beyond four weeks after an infection with the covid virus. These symptoms can fluctuate so they can change over time, but importantly we need to exclude all the conditions that could be causing these symptoms, such as cardiac problems that could be causing heart palpitations. Once those other exclusions have been made, then we can make a diagnosis of long covid which can affect any organ or system within the body. So again, I talked to my GP and they said everything you're describing now is the classic symptoms of long covid Their main concern is they've not returned to their normal level of well being and function and are often frustrated or worried about why that's not happened. Everybody's had a cold or flu, and, you know, after two or three weeks, you can go back to doing the normal things you were doing, and people are very concerned that they're not able to do that. When I reached my early to mid forties, I knew it was really important to start looking after myself to maintain my fitness so I began running and I started enjoying ParkRun and taking part in other sort of fun runs around Stockport building up to 10K. The next thing I found myself considering was taking part in marathons. With all this running and also going to the gym, I found myself in really good shape for a man in his mid forties. It became a running joke in the house that the kids would refer to me as Tony Stark as Iron Man, that I was able to sort of do these things without without much effort and undertake, you know, rigorous training and gym sessions every day of the week, but that was before I got covid. As a physiotherapist, physical activity is absolutely paramount as far as I'm concerned, it's finding the right level of physical activity and unfortunately, if you've been a fairly high functioning, you've been a runner, climber attended the gym regularly that might not be for you at the moment, and you may well be doing yourself more harm than good by pushing that level of physical activity. So it's very much about finding the right level of physical activity or exercise for you at this moment in time to give you a baseline to then build up from and not necessarily in a graded way, but in a much smoother, progressive way. I began noticing real differences In my physicality. I'd yawn and my entire body would shake. I'd feel shudders going down to my calfs. I felt eternally heavy, like I was dragging around like a lead cloak. I just felt weighed down. I was in meetings at work, and I couldn't remember the next point I wanted to make. My short term memory was shot. I knew there and then you know, this wasn't me, that something was seriously, seriously wrong here. It's affected me in ways that I couldn't really have envisaged. Small things like being tidy puts a great stress on the relationship at home. I used to be such a tidy freak, nearly obsessive but now sometimes I don't have the the energy to fold my clothes or put them away properly. The little things in the house that I used to do, I don't have the energy for anymore. Obviously, these kind of things put the strain on my marriage, on the way my children look at me and what they expect of me and the high standards I used to be able to uphold, but now just don't have that kind of energy for anymore. So if you feel that you're not recovering from your covid infection, and you've not necessarily triggered that four weeks, which would be when we're considering long covid, but you're still symptomatic two or three weeks after covid infection, people around you have been recovering and you've still got the cough and the tiredness, initially, I would direct someone to the Your Covid Recovery website. There's a lot of information on there, and they can search out their various symptoms to help them manage that, but as a first aid advice, I would say slow down, routine routine with sleeping habits, rest habits, eating habits, gentle exercise or physical activity if you can manage it. Have a social network around you, if you can, that are going to help support you, not put too many demands on you. Let work know that you're not improving and ultimately contact your GP and start that process of getting the long covid diagnosis through. Through talking to my GP, and I talk to my GP every month now to to monitor my condition, but through talking to him, I was able to access a referral to the Stockport Long Covid Clinic. Through that clinic, my physiotherapist has helped me to think about structure in my day, to think about how exercise helps my mental health, to not be frightened to listen to my body and take a nap or close my eyes for 10 minutes. From a personal approach from self managing, the rule I would offer to everyone is get a routine, get back into the routine that includes good sleep hygiene, regular meals, light amount of physical activity and time in your day to rest and not particularly set yourself goals and ambitions to progress. Just give your body time to adjust to this new situation and then we can start to build from that routine, my absolute first line advice It is the person I am now and I guess what I'm saying is, just because you've got long covid, it doesn't mean you have to stop, but you just have to be aware that the repercussions are different from what they were before. You recover at a different rate, the body aches in a different way, those aches are sometimes disproportionate to the exercise that you've done but I know for my health physically and my mental health, I need to keep being outdoors exercising, running, walking, the dog, walking with family. There are a number of support services we direct people to or make the referral on their behalf, but they're all accessible to people to make their own referrals so these services generally don't have wait lists, and you don't need a referral from a doctor or health professional to access them. So we've got the Viaduct well-being and self-care service based at Kingsgate which offer a lot of support, with from finances, accessing benefits, social support and they also have the long covid support group. Life Leisure, which run the Paris scheme for health and wellbeing, they're running now exercise classes for people with long term health conditions and for long covid and they will do bespoke one-to-one asessment to work out what your physical abilities are and give very sensible advice on exercise. From a mental health point of view there is the Making Spaces Open Door and then we've got the Start and The Prevention Alliance so there are Stockport based council organisations that can help with all sorts of lifestyle changes, so weight loss, weight management, smoking cessation and again mental health support, and those are the my go to ones in the Stockport area. If you or anyone you know is suffering with the symptoms of long covid, please start by talking to your GP. They'll be able to signpost you and point you in the right directions, maybe even refer you to the long Covid clinic who were just doing incredible work. And I'm grateful to the Health Service for all they've done for me