‘It’s a horrible attack on the body’: What it’s really like to have mpox
Mpox has flooded headlines in recent months, but very little has been written on what it’s actually like to contract the viral disease.
There’s a taboo around the subject, reminiscent of the early days of HIV/Aids, largely because the first wave of the disease was associated with ‘risky’ sexual behaviours, and spread mainly between men who have sex with men.
The Telegraph spoke to three people infected in the 2022 global outbreak, to understand what it’s like to contract the virus formerly known as monkeypox.
“I’ve always been told I have beautiful, glowing skin,” said Victor, a 37-year-old from Atlanta, Georgia who came down with mpox in August 2022.
“I’ve never had acne, not even during puberty, so my first thought as I looked in the mirror one morning was: where in the world are these two pimples on my face coming from?
“A few days later I had a ton more – 10 or 15 of them – and they were filled with pus, so I went to the emergency room. I’d heard about people getting mpox lesions on their intimate areas, but not on their faces. I had kissed someone the week before, so I think that’s where I got it from.
“The doctors immediately quarantined me and took a swab – a week later called me to tell me it was mpox, but by that point, I knew,” said Victor.
“I couldn’t even count how many lesions were on my face. I had gotten a fever, my tonsils swelled, and I had headaches.
“By week two, I could hardly sleep. I couldn’t eat either because my face had swollen to the point I was unrecognisable, I didn’t want to video call anyone because I looked so bad, even though I was alone in my apartment and wanted to talk to people.
“My throat felt like it was closing up on me and it was hard to even swallow water because it felt like razors were in my throat. The lesions became so infected that I developed cellulitis [a potentially fatal bacterial infection of the skin and underneath tissues]. I was scared at one point I was going to die.”
For Tristan, a 31-year-old living in London, the onset was less obvious.
“I was in Turin to watch the final of Eurovision with friends. I was very tired and had bad lower back pain the whole time – but we were on holiday, out drinking every night, so I assumed it was just that,” he said.
“I ended up buying a plane ticket to go back to London early, because I was feeling so unwell.
“I had noticed a couple of small spots coming up on my intimate areas, which I assumed straight away was an STI – so I went to get a test,” said Tristan. Although he had recently had sex, they had used protection.
“I was still feeling terrible, so I went to A&E a couple of days later whilst waiting for my results. At this point, I had a secondary infection – strep throat, probably because I was so run down from what I didn’t yet know was mpox – and I had a weird, blanching rash on the top of my feet.”
“My STI doctor had got the results back the same day I took myself to hospital – I had monkeypox. Suddenly all the staff in A&E put on hazmat suits – it felt over the top, but I understood, especially because Covid had just happened.”
‘It was an extreme attack on my body’
Tom (not his real name), a 25-year-old also from Atlanta, Georgia, had symptoms that were entirely concentrated on the face and mouth. He thinks he got the virus from a three-way kiss at a gay bathhouse in the city.
“It started with one bump above my lip and it was p—ing me off. It started growing, but it didn’t hurt at first,” Tom said.
“A few days on, I got the lesions on my tongue. It was awful, an 11/10 of pain. I couldn’t drink any water at first because it stung so much. I never cry but I would wake up in the middle of the morning crying because it was that bad. It was an extreme attack on my body.”
“I had to eat, obviously, but there were lesions all over my tongue, even on my tastebuds. I would try to drink smoothies and apple sauce. I lost some weight. I have some PTSD, and whenever I feel random sensations in my tongue my anxiety will spike and I will think ‘Oh god it’s happening again’.”
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In the UK and the US, men who have sex with men are eligible for the mpox vaccine, given in two doses a month apart. But Tom, Tristan, and Victor contracted the virus too early on in the first wave to be fully protected. Victor had already had a single dose, whilst Tom and Tristan were unvaccinated.
There are currently no medicines widely available to treat the virus.
In exceptional cases – typically in people who have HIV – patients can be given the antiviral tecovirimat, also known as TPOXX, a drug traditionally used to treat smallpox.
The drug is typically reserved for very severe cases requiring hospitalisation, and none of the people The Telegraph spoke to were offered it.
“I begged the doctors to give me TPOXX, but they refused,” said Victor. “I alternated between Tylenol and ibuprofen to bring down my fevers and manage the pain.”
Tristan, who was only the sixth person in the UK to contract monkeypox, was offered an isolation unit in the Royal Free Hospital in North London.
It’s a designated ward for the treatment of rare, infectious diseases and any imported cases of the new mpox strain currently circulating in Africa, known as clade 1b, will also be isolated there, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
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“I spent two weeks in isolation in the hospital, but I was feeling much better by then. I wasn’t treated with painkillers or antivirals or anything like that. I know people who had super painful lesions but mine were mild, and by the time I was isolating I’d got through the worst of it,” he explained.
Like Victor, Tom treated the virus with over-the-counter painkillers at home. “The hospital called on my sixth day of isolation to check up on me and told me to send a picture of my tongue so they could see if it had healed. To get back to my normal life, the lesions had to scar over so I couldn’t spread anything, which took a week or two,” he told The Telegraph.
All three men have since fully recovered, and urged others to take the disease seriously.
“People need to be aware of the fact this disease isn’t discriminatory. It doesn’t just infect gay men, no one is exempt,” said Tristan. “It’s a severe illness and a horrible attack on the body.”
“I think mpox gets stigmatised because people think it’s a disease just gay people can get – but viruses do not discriminate, and everyone should be aware of that,” added Tom.
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