A homosexual man from London, UK, lamented his decision-making after he contracted a severe case of monkeypox at a wild sex party.
UK gay man opens up about his monkeypox infection
The gent, only known by his Twitter name ‘David’, opened up about his experience with the orthopoxvirus deemed “the most important for public health” by the World Health Organisation (WHO), in a thread that has since gone viral.
According to David, earlier in July 2022, he’d participated in an unprotected fetish party with several men. The following Monday, he received a monkeypox vaccination to protect himself from possible exposure, but by then, he’d already been infected.
“Following my vaccination, I had a fever. I attributed this to the fact that, as a child, I did not respond well to the live smallpox vaccine. I had bad fevers then too!” he reflected.
Not long after the fever broke, David noticed roughly six spots around his ‘back area’.
“After [three] nights of little to no sleep, I took myself to Dean Street and they confirmed my suspicions. I had monkeypox,” he revealed.
How painful was the treatment?
David was prescribed co-codamol, a mixture of paracetamol and codeine, and lidocaine, a local anaesthetic that numbs the skin.
In David’s case, the lesions and skin-crawling blisters synonymous with monkeypox were not that severe. However, the one fact he highlighted was the excruciating pain he endured during a three-week-long recovery process.
“On the pain… on a scale of [one] to f*** me it hurts, there are moments you just want the world to swallow you up but then there’s codeine. I’ve fractured bones and been operated on without anaesthetic – this pain is a whole new level, so solidarity with all monkeypox sufferers,” David tweeted.
Weeks into his recovery, David still suffers from daily doses of pain from the monkeypox infection, despite taking prescribed antibiotics.
David remains in isolation and cannot participate in any sexcapades for at least two months, as it’s unclear “whether the virus is still transmitted through semen.”
You can read David’s full thread below:
Suffice it to say, David’s attempt at breaking the stigma around monkeypox fell on deaf ears. In fact, most commenters who encountered his thread criticised the Londoner for his poor decision-making.
Here are some of the reactions to David’s monkeypox story:
