A 35-year-old man from the United Kingdom, who lives with HIV, decided to tell about his experience infected with monkeypox after developing one of the “most serious” pictures of the disease.
In the UK, a 35-year-old man with HIV he was infected with monkeypox at the same time. The patient He could barely swallow his own saliva and says he was afraid to “die”. For this reason he decided to tell his story.
Harun Tulunay is a charity worker in London, who reportedly contracted the virus after kiss someone infected.
Although in general the outbreak of the endemic virus causes mild symptoms of the disease and with one low mortality -for the moment-, in Tulunay, who lives with HIV, the situation was different.
The man told Insider that the swallowing his own saliva was one of the most painful experiences of his life, which even led him to believe that he was going to die.
Harum, contrary to common contagions of monkeypox, had to remain hospitalized for 11 days after the doctors themselves told him that his case was the “more serious than they had treated”reported the medium.
However, the road to getting the proper care from Tulunay was long and complicated.
the first signs
The first symptoms appeared on June 13, when he began to develop a mild fever. For this reason, she underwent a PCR test, since she suspected that it was a Covid picture. However, all tests came back negative.
But the worst, Tulunay said, happened in the next 24 hours, when he developed a unbearable painwho described “like ripping the flesh off your bones”.
After five days the symptoms escalated. Fever rose to 39 degrees Celsius, her lymph nodes were swollen and the sore throat was excruciating.
Added to this, the skin lesions they began to surface due to the high temperature of his body.
The man decided to deal with the ailments by consuming anti-inflammatories and antibiotics free to use, however, these they had no effect.
Positive results
To the On the ninth day, Tulunay decided to go back to a health center to be tested for monkeypox.. Doctors gave him medication to treat possible tonsillitis in the meantime while he waited for the test results.
During the days that passed, a nurse was in charge of monitoring him through telephone calls, occasion in which the man told her that his throat had swollen to the point that he could no longer eat or drink liquids.
“A friend called me, and I distinctly remember telling him that I thought I was going to die because nothing was getting better,” Tulunay reportedly said.
It was at this time that Harum was hospitalized for proper care. On the third day of being hospitalized, his results for monkeypox were positive.
At that point, the eczema that he had developed already occupied a large part of his body, however, the one that caused him the most problems was a pustule that appeared on his nose, which, over the days, became infected.
One month after, on July 14, the man was discharged and treatment for monkeypox was terminatedwhich was experimental given his HIV diagnosis.
It should be remembered that several investigations have shown that people suffering from a sexually transmitted disease can also be infected with monkeypox.
How risky is it to get monkeypox and HIV?
According to the British HIV Association, the virus does not increase the risk of getting monkeypox, nor does it mean that a more serious picture of it will develop.
However, there are cases in which this can happen when the patient is immunocompromised.
In cases where CD4 counts are less than 200 cells/mm3the virus is detectable and there is a AIDS defining illnessif there is the possibility of developing more severe cases of monkeypox, longer and more transmissible.
In the country, the count of monkeypox infections amounts to 91 cases as of August 4, with no fatalities and 25 cases discharged.