My daughter was 13 when she was diagnosed with ME. She was sick for four long years and I did everything in my power to help. Through our shared pain, I discovered my life’s work.
I’m Marianne Svanevik, a private practicing physiotherapist from Bergen, Norway. For the last 20 years, I’ve helped hundreds of people fully recover from ME/CFS. Since COVID hit in 2020, I’ve used the same method to help people with Long COVID recover with great success. Nothing brings me more joy than helping someone get their life back!
There’s a Long COVID epidemic
Since late 2020, my private clinic has been flooded with phone calls from Long COVID patients. Their stories are so similar: They caught covid, but after recovering from the infection, some symptoms remained, especially fatigue.
The people who call me have been sick for many months, often years. Most of them have lost their jobs/stopped going to school and spend lots of time in bed. They are desperate, but even though they have had me recommended by a doctor, unfortunately I have to turn almost every one of them away.
Like having ME/CFS, Long COVID is one of the worst things that can happen to you. You wake up one morning with no energy, a foggy mind, headache, body pain. You can’t work. You can’t exercise. You can’t socialize. The life you had is gone.
Millions and millions of people, all over the world, have gotten Long Covid over the last few years. It’s an epidemic. Yet, nothing shows up on blood tests and you have to convince others that something is wrong with you.
These people are not getting any help. The doctors don’t know how to treat them and although they give the best advice they can, “Make sure you rest” or “Try to push through”, it doesn‘t work. People remain sick for years, and many never recover without help.
There’s a way to treat Long COVID but people don’t know about it.
I know how to treat them, I’ve helped hundreds of patients fully recover over the last 20 years, but I’m not a business woman or entrepreneur, I’m just a physiotherapist helping people 1-1 in my clinic.
How can I help all the patients who come to me desperate for help when I’m already fully booked? How can I do something for the millions who suffer in silence from their bedrooms and don't know that there’s a way to recover?
My family has pushed me for years to write a book about my experience and method so that the knowledge doesn’t get lost when I eventually retire. It’s good advice as I’m 63 and not getting any younger, but I’ve been too busy with my patients.
All that changed in 2023 when I took on Long COVID patient Bjarte Austrheim Bakke.
When Bjarte contacted me, he was not doing great. Compared to his previous self - working intense, long hours, running 10k daily, traveling back and forth between Bergen and Stockholm weekly, constantly reading books/podcasts, AND raising two young kids - he was a ghost. He’d been sick for a year and now spent most of his time in bed. He couldn’t work or take care of his family and he was not happy about it.
“I’ve tried to figure this thing out on my own and I’m unable to do it. There’s no information. The doctors are clueless and they won’t even put me in contact with others who struggle from Long COVID. I’m on my own which is fine, but I’m operating on 1% of my normal capacity and it’s hard to solve this thing while being so useless.”
I told Bjarte that I was fully booked, but it made me choke up inside. Here’s a resourceful member of society just wasting away and I know I can help him.
“How about we just chat for 15 minutes once a month, Marianne? Trust me you won’t regret it, I’ll do whatever it takes and I’ll be your best patient ever! You won’t regret it”.
He was right.
Ending the boom and bust cycle
Bjarte was the typical impatient patient who as soon as he had a slightly better day, he would do too much, crash, and be in bed for a week. This kind of behavior is not helpful for getting better. Some people are the opposite: they are too afraid of crashes so they do almost nothing every single day. This is also not helpful as their bodies get used to doing nothing and don’t get the stimuli needed to get better.
After analyzing his situation, I created a daily plan of dos and don’ts like I do with all my patients. The plan was based upon his individual circumstances and my experience of what works to recover from Long COVID/ME/CFS. Several of these instructions confused Bjarte.
“Why do I have to do absolutely nothing for two hours after I wake up? What’s so special about these two hours vs. the rest of the day? Why can’t I just drive my wife to work in the morning? How difficult can it be for the body to sit still in a car for 10 minutes? Why do you want me to shower less and late in the day instead of in the morning? Do you want me to be sick AND smelly!? 😀”.
Even though he found some of the instructions odd, he trusted me, probably because I’d been recommended to him and he’s an old friend of my son. He followed the plan meticulously.
After a few weeks, his cycles of feeling a little better, doing too much and crashing for a week, ended. Gradually we had stabilized his situation and we started to slowly increase his activity levels in two-week increments.
“Hell yeah Marianne, this is working! 😀” he said with a huge smile on his face.
We have to do something, NOW!
But while Bjarte got better, recovering from Long COVID/ME/CFS isn’t done in a day - it takes months, sometimes years.
“Ohhh, this is sooooo slow, what can I do to speed things up, Marianne?”.
I told him that going away from his family for weeks, being alone, helps, but that this is practically difficult for most people.
“Let me talk with my wife”. A week later he left and was gone for a month.
When he returned he felt even better.
“I have less and less super bad days where I’m stuck in bed and can’t even watch TV. I can walk 30 minutes most days now and I have regained the ability to think about important things. Some days I can even work on my computer for a few hours. Something is happening! 🙂”
We kept increasing his activity level further over the next few weeks, but Bjarte wasn’t satisfied.
“Marianne, why don’t people know about your method? I found nothing about it even though I spoke to lots of doctors and went through the whole internet twice. People are suffering and they have no idea what to do. That’s not good enough. We have to do something, NOW!”.
Getting started
Bjarte explained that he wanted to get this method out in the world, but I was hesitant. I already worked too much and didn’t feel I had the energy for all the fights I knew would start if I claimed I knew how to help these people. I’d gone down that route before, trying to influence treatment protocols at the higher levels, but it took enormous amounts of energy and I decided to focus on treating my patients in my clinic instead.
I also worried about Bjarte - he was not yet in a position where he could work and what if he started overextending himself again?
But Bjarte didn’t relent. “It’s too important Marianne, who cares what other people might say? F*** them, let them say whatever they want, people are suffering badly and they need this program. I promise I won’t overextend myself. All you need to do is to be available for phone calls and we’ll document your method and create a program for people. It will work.”
I was also worried what would happen once the program was ready, I wouldn’t have time for more 1-1 consultations.
“Don’t worry”, Bjarte said, “We’ll find a way to do this without you having to meet more patients in person. We’ll create an online program and all you need to do is to set aside a few more hours a week for this, surely that’s worth it, we can’t let your knowledge die with you!”.
I agreed. It helped that Bjarte was an entrepreneur who had done similar things before in the areas of diabetes, blood pressure, and weight loss. My son vouched for him too.
“Let’s just start Marianne, we can pull the plug on this at any time if you don’t want to continue.”
Off we went.
The first 12 patients
The division of labor was clear. I was the expert, and Bjarte, well, according to himself, “I’m the dog. I’ll do whatever needs to be done, all you need to do is to talk. Tell me how you treat people and I’ll take notes, organize them, and create a first draft that we’ll iterate on until we have something brilliant.”
And that’s what we did. Call after call, week after week. Sometimes we spoke for 5 minutes, other times 2 hours. We spoke when Bjarte took his daily walks, when I drove to meet patients, in between patient visits, in the evening, and on my balcony over a few beers. Sometimes we had to pause for a few days as Bjarte didn’t have enough energy to talk, other times we spoke several times a day, morning, afternoon and evening. I worked more hours than I’d done for years, but I loved it, and my lovely partner and family were very supportive.
“Finally mum, I can’t believe you’re doing this, it's about time! 😀”, my son said.
After a few months, we’d put together a very initial, rough product that we wanted to give to 10 people with Long COVID/ME/CFS for free. We went through about 50 applications and selected those we thought were most ready for something like this. Keep in mind: an online program is not for everyone - it requires strong motivation and ability to execute a demanding plan, and it’s difficult to do that if your life is too complicated.
Two of those we rejected convinced us to accept them after all so in total 12 people joined the initial program. Three months later 5 of these had quit, the other 7 were doing great.
“This is what happens in my clinic too”, I told Bjarte. “Almost all of those who stick to the program recover, but for some people the program is too hard and they quit. That’s understandable as some people have lots of responsibilities, especially young children, that it’s almost impossible to get out of, and that makes it hard to do what’s required to get better.”
These first 12 patients were invaluable. Treating someone 1-1 in the clinic is different from treating people online with far less human interaction. They helped us figure out what needed to improve. Yet all 7 patients who stayed with the program are currently in recovery and doing well - and nothing they had tried before had worked. We were doing something right.
We spent a few more weeks working on the program and then, during the summer of 2024 we were ready for the next step.
Recover from Long COVID: Our step-by-step program that goes in August 2024
So, for the last year, I’ve worked extra on top of treating patients in my clinic day-to-day to create an online recovery program for people with Long COVID together with Bjarte. It’s a step-by-step program that doesn’t require any physical or virtual meetings as everything happens via email, and it makes it possible for me to help many more people than I can face-to-face in my clinic.
The fundamental principle of the program is to guide the patient to find the activity level that they are able to master per now, and then gradually increase it until the patient has fully recovered.
The first step of the program is to analyze the individual circumstances of the patient and create a daily plan that explains exactly what to do and not to do every single day.
The second step is for the patient to execute this plan for the next 14 days.
The third step is a bi-weekly check-in with us where the patient answers some questions and we tweak the program for the next 14 days. And so it continues in 14-day cycles until the patient has fully recovered.
To be able to help as many people as possible, we provide three different programs.
Program launched August 2024: Contact us if you want to recover from Long COVID
Bjarte, who still suffers from Long COVID but has improved significantly by following this program, is my business partner. I provide professional medical advice, he provides structure and communicates with the patients.
If you want to recover from Long COVID, send us a private message on this platform or email us at recoverlongcovid@gmail.com and we’ll send you information about the three programs we offer. Your request will be handled with confidentiality.
There is hope! 🙂🔥
Marianne & Bjarte
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