“I don’t wish on anyone what I’ve been through“: cured of monkey pox, which gave him “the worst pains of his life“, Kyle Planck, a 26-year-old New Yorker, regrets the lack of reaction from health authorities when the first cases appeared in the United States.
This doctoral student in pharmacology who studies infectious diseases inevitably listened in May, when this disease, detected for a long time in Africa, was announced in a more unusual way in Europe, then in the United States, mainly in men who have sex with men, although anyone can catch it.
“I was a little worried it would reach us here, especially as I’m part of the LGBTQ+ community “, he says.
Thirty lesions
End of June, “right after Pride I started to feel sick“, he says. The symptoms – fever and glands – make him think of monkeypox. The rashes after four days of fever leave no doubt.”After a day, they had spread all over my body, about thirty lesions“.
Kyle then receives Tpoxx (tecovirimat), an antiviral originally designed against human smallpox but authorized only experimentally against monkeypox.
If the treatment quickly relieved him, he felt for a week “the worst pains of his life“, Mostly the “lesions on (his) mucous membranes“.
“I took hot baths six to seven times a day, that was all I could do“, he explains.
“In the end, I had a relatively mild case” grace “rapid detection and treatment […]. And I know a lot of people have a much worse experience“, nevertheless concedes Kyle.