Michael Rosen shares experiences

The poet, broadcaster and children's author contracted Covid-19 a year ago and spent 48 days in intensive care
Michael Rosen has been in the spotlight lately sharing his story about his personal battle with Long Covid, and was kind enough to talk to us about his experiences. He is delighted that a specialist neurological clinic has opened up at Queen Square. You can watch his full message by clicking on the video above.

He says, “I got Covid in March 2020 and now I can’t really see with my left eye, hear with my left ear, and I have numbness in my toes. There are so many of us around the country with these symptoms – and many others even worse."

"I’m over the moon that The National Brain Appeal has funded this clinic because help is needed for the thousands of us affected.”

More than 80 people affected by Long Covid have now been seen at the Covid Neurology Clinic – funded by The National Brain Appeal – since it opened in November 2020. We responded to urgent requests from doctors at the hospital faced with growing numbers of patients with neurological complications after contracting the virus and quickly provided the £65,000 needed to fund the clinic for one year.

Led by consultant neurologists Dr Patricia McNamara and Dr Mike Zandi, the clinic supports patients who have needed help after discharge from hospital as well as patients who have not been hospitalised but need access to care for the long-term consequences of the virus.

Our funding has also enabled clinicians to increase their virtual multidisciplinary meeting (MDT) from monthly to weekly, allowing them to offer guidance to colleagues all over the UK who are seeing increasing numbers of patients affected by neurological complications.

Springtime challenges

As the sun begins to shine and restrictions start to ease, we have two challenges to get you motivated and moving! After a very successful New Year launch, we have expanded our Neural Pathways challenge and also introduced a new swimming challenge called BrainWave.

Lots of our supporters have already taken on Neural Pathways and collectively raised almost £6,000! We’ve had to wait until restrictions lift to launch BrainWave – but now it's the perfect time to dive in!

For both of these events you need to:
— Swim either 6km, 16km or 60km (in fact, take on whatever distance you fancy!) or walk 26.2 miles and track your progress online, using our London Marathon route map!
— Choose a local pool or outdoor swim centre if you're swimming for us, or opt in to walk that marathon distance. You can do this at once or over a staggered period.
— Decide if you want to fundraise alone or as part of a team. Please make sure you adhere to the latest social distancing advice if you are a part of a team.
— Aim to raise at least £60 for us – all monies raised will go towards supporting key projects at Queen Square.
— Sign up by clicking below or emailing us.

It's free to register for BrainWave, while for Neural Pathways the fee is £6. This then gives you access to our special challenge platform, where you can record your distance against our virtual map across London and collect sponsorship, plus you'll get celebratory emails when you reach certain milestones.

We are very excited to see challenge events start to open up again after a year, so don't forget to share and tag us in your photos so we can cheer you along