Peter Kelly was barely recovering from COVID-19 when monkeypox struck him, inflicting “the worst pain in [sa] life “.
The 28-year-old Torontonian had just returned to work as a dancer and fitness trainer in late May when he came down with a fever. “I was delirious,” he said, describing the excruciating symptoms associated with the disease.
He also had to fight isolation, he who found himself alone during his three weeks of quarantine at home.
“I must have been terribly ill and I didn’t even know it. For two days, I hardly moved. I went to the bathroom, then I went back to sleep. I had a very high fever and chills at night. I wore a winter coat to bed, I was so cold,” he said.
Her fever subsided on the third day, and shortly afterwards Peter Kelly began to notice redness on her skin. Like just about everyone, he went online to try to understand what that could mean. “It’s the worst thing to do!” he admits.
The man went to doctors, who initially suspected a case of herpes. But images of monkeypox caught his attention. So he went to a hospital to demand a screening test and the result came back positive.
According to him, Mr. Kelly would have been one of the first patients infected with the virus in Ontario. He is now part of a research project carried out on former monkeypox patients by St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
According to data from the Public Health Agency of Canada, there have been more than 600 cases of monkeypox in the country since June. Quebec has the highest number of infections with 300, followed by Ontario with 230 cases, then British Columbia with 40 cases. Alberta has a dozen.
Worldwide, more than 6,000 laboratory-confirmed cases have been identified so far. Three infected people died.
“Electric Shocks”
Peter Kelly describes the redness and lesions caused by the infection as the most painful thing he has had to endure. The simple act of turning over in bed caused him “excruciating” pain.
He explains that it was when the redness turned into boils that the pain became unbearable. “That’s where the pain was most powerful — and I really mean powerful. I felt like electric shocks. I didn’t sleep for about thirty hours, it was just too painful. I had a towel between my teeth to bite into and rocked myself to forget the pain. But there was nothing to do. It was insane, ”said the young man.
A lesion under his left foot turned into a bloody wound since he had to lean on it to walk.
Then, to add to the unbearable pain, the isolation caused him enormous psychological stress, he said. With the exception of a few hospital or clinic visits, Mr. Kelly was left alone for three weeks in his tiny Toronto apartment.
As the infection mainly affects men who have homosexual relations, the disease also comes with its share of hateful comments.
Despite his fears of receiving backlash, Mr Kelly decided to be transparent and speak out about the consequences of the infection. “I’m going to talk about it because there are other people who are going through the same thing. It’s not just me. They are in the same situation, isolated, and nobody talks about it. There are no resources,” he laments.