Corentin and Nicolas, two young Parisians who contracted monkey pox at the end of June, told of their ordeal.
The resurgence of cases of monkeypox in countries where it is usually absent has been worrying health authorities for several months now. While France counts 498 active casesNicolas and Corentin, affected by the virus, testify to BFM TV.
When he started to feel a fever and strong sore throat, Nicolas was a thousand miles from suspecting the virus he had contracted. “At the hospital, when they told me that I might have caught monkeypox, I didn’t believe it at all.” It was this Wednesday, June 29 that he was given this diagnosis.
It is a few hours after the first sore throat that the characteristic pustules of monkeypox begin to appear. “It looked like tiny little mosquito pimples but honestly if I hadn’t been asked the question, at no time would I have noticed them. I had to look at my body with a magnifying glass”he explains.
The young man is now hospitalized and on morphine for 5 days. “I had never had a pain like this in my throat“, Nicholas continues. The contamination could have taken place at the music festival, at the time of close contact at the level of the mouth with a friend.
“Extremely painful and very very restrictive lesions”
It is also a “close contact with a person in a festive context”which led Corentin to contract the virus.
He explains that he started by feeling symptoms “very painful and not getting better” similar to hemorrhoids.
The pimples were then quick to appear. “I have extremely painful and very very constricting lesions that have appeared on the mucous membranes”, in the genital area. “Then finally, sorts of pimples on the body and the face: scabs which do not heal, basically”.
He will be diagnosed with monkeypox three days after the first symptoms. “I found it abnormal and I quickly went to the hospital because it was already very restrictive: I couldn’t sleep anymore. They were sleepless nights. I couldn’t eat anymore, I avoided it because I had a lot of pain when I went to the toilet”.
If his condition is improving today, he recounts this experience as a real ordeal. “I was prescribed strong painkillers because the pain was unbearable. Today it still throws me off and the pimples are still there even though they are starting to shrink a bit.”
From now on, Nicolas and Corentin are campaigning for the French health authorities to set up a prevention and information system on the risks of this disease.