MICHELLE MARTIN, HOST:
Today, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox a, quote, “public health emergency of international concern,” unquote. In the US, most cases are concentrated among men who have sex with men, and people can spend days searching for the right diagnosis. Jackie Fortier of member station KPCC has this report.
JACKIE FORTIER, BYLINE: Two days after Kevin Kwong flew home to California from the New York Pride, his hands were so itchy they woke him up. At first he thought it was eczema.
KEVIN KWONG: Everything started to deteriorate rapidly. I started getting more spots on my face, more redness and fluid started leaking. The rash has spread to my elbows and hands and kind of like my ankles.
FORTIER: ER doctor doesn’t think it’s monkeypox. Kwong’s spots were clumped together and looked different from the pictures of monkeypox the doctor had seen.
KWONG: Depending on where I was with my symptoms and who I talked to, I got different answers.
FORTIER: During a virtual meeting, a nurse noticed a rash spreading to his eyes and told him to go to the emergency room. Doctors there told him he might have monkeypox, but were unprepared to deal with a potential case.
KWONG: So they were investigating while I was in this room and back and forth on the phone with the CDC. I expected myself, as a patient, to be in the dark, but I didn’t realize how little information providers were given and how unprepared they were.
FORTIER: His lesions were swabbed, but the monkeypox test result wouldn’t come for at least a week. He spent 12 hours in the emergency room before being sent home.
KWONG: I’m just unhappy. I have sores in the back of my throat, in my mouth, all over my body.
FORTIER: Says the pain was inevitable.
KWONG: It feels like you’re putting your hand in water that’s too hot – kind of like that feeling – but you can’t get it out.
FORTIER: After a FaceTime conversation with a friend, he cried after seeing himself on the screen.
KWONG: Your body is taken over by this thing you don’t understand. It is both painful and terrifying.
FORTIER: After days of meetings and very little sleep, Kwong decided to drive to UC San Francisco Hospital. There he was given oxycodone for the pain and swabbed again for monkeypox. The next day, UCSF infectious disease specialist Dr. Peter Chin-Hong contacted him.
PETER CHIN-HONG: I thought, wow, this is a really, really widespread disease. I have seen other cases of monkeypox before, but they were very limited. I would say Kevin is probably in the top 5% of disease severity and most people probably wouldn’t get as sick as Kevin.
FORTIER: Because the rash was near Kevin Kwong’s eyes, if left untreated, it could have made him blind. Dr. Chin-Hong says the case was so severe that the hospital approved the prescription of TPOXX. It is an antiviral that has received special approval from the FDA to treat monkeypox under certain circumstances.
CHIN-HONG: I was shocked at how quickly Kevin improved, so it was almost like a turbo rocket on the road to recovery.
FORTIER: Kwong thinks he probably contracted monkeypox from someone he came into contact with during Pride in New York. This person tested positive. Despite Kwong’s quick turnaround on the anti-virus, he has yet to test positive. Dr. Chin-Hong says the healthcare workers may not have scrubbed hard enough to get live cells.
CHIN-HONG: As a clinician, it’s very difficult to get a really good sample in these types of lesions because the patient is often in pain and you don’t like to see people suffer.
FORTIER: Kwong now takes six antiviral pills a day and no longer needs painkillers.
KWONG: My face was the first to heal, which I think helped me a lot, just from a mindset point of view – to be able to recognize who I am in the mirror again.
FORTIER: Throughout her ordeal, Kwong posted on social media to encourage people to get tested and get the vaccine if they were eligible. For NPR News, I’m Jackie Fortier in Los Angeles. Transcript courtesy of NPR, Copyright NPR.
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