this story contains slightly nsfw content and should not be read if you are not at least 18 years of age or if you think of me as, like, a sweet innocent baby angel. after the intro, it’s divided into three major sections: first, a chronological description of my disease course; second, my thoughts and ramblings on the matter; and third, a description of what i plan to do next.

feel free to choose your own adventure.

i swear this story is true and that my coworkers can corroborate it: as early as mid-may of this year, i was waltzing around the lab talking to anyone who would listen about “monkeypox,” a relatively rare tropical disease with a wholly inaccurate name, as monkeys are not its primary animal reservoir. it was causing an outbreak among men who have sex with men in various countries across europe, with unprecedented levels of person-to-person transmission that defied established medical knowledge about the disease. i had read that european health authoritieswere speculating that viral spread had occurred at large gatherings like raves and parties, and they were realizing that it was easily transmitted through close, usually sexual, contact. i had already scoured the new england journal of medicine article that chronicled the case of this outbreak’s first confirmed monkeypox patient in the u.s., and i shared the photos on my social media so people knew what to look out for. i felt that this was important because the cdc information page only had ~4 pictures of monkeypox lesions and they all looked like they were taken on a motorola razr.

“i’m worried about monkeypox,” i said to my ex-boyfriend. “what’s monkeypox?” he replied.

“i’m worried about monkeypox,” i said to my mom. “what’s monkeypox?” she asked.

“i’m worried about monkeypox,” i said to my therapist. “what’s monkeypox?” she inquired.

was i the only person thinking about this??? a couple other science gays on twitter were the only ones who didn’t make me feel like i was overreacting.

with all of this information, the wheels inside my little gay brain started turning. the illness is known to have an incubation period (the time between infection and the beginning of symptomatic disease) on the scale of weeks. i’ve been seeing a lot of social media posts from people in my networks who are taking trips to european countries this summer. pride is coming up in a few weeks, and what is pride? a bunch of travel and people and parties and sex. this looks like the perfect storm: a lot of people might become infected and not even know it before they go to these events. monkeypox is about to be a big problem for us — “us” being the lgbtq+ community.

let me tell you, it kind of sucks being right all the time. but my inchoate scientist brain was right, and that’s exactly what happened. the irony is not lost on me: someone who saw this coming is one of the early people to be affected by it. but if there’s one thing i’m gonna do, i’m gonna talk about my feelings publicly — and trust me, i have a lot of feelings about what is happening.

part 1: the details.

i went out on a wednesday night, which is never a good idea but always a fun idea. as a result, i didn’t wake up until almost noon on thursday, june 23rd, and i saw that gay twitter was ablaze. the new york city department of health had attempted to pull a beyoncé: without any warning, they decided to announce a pop-up monkeypox vaccination site at a sexual health clinic in chelsea. the hours would be 11am-7pm on certain days of the week. appointments were preferred, but you could walk in as well. i rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and tried to make an appointment, but they were all taken. i hopped out of bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and put on some short shorts: i had decided to try to get a walk-in dose, a privilege afforded to me by my flexible schedule as a phd student, and i was trying to show off my legs while doing it. i grabbed a 20 oz. cold brew on the way to the train and texted one of my friends who lived in chelsea to see if he could scope out the situation.

by 2pm, the clinic had to announce that they were closing. they had run out of doses. hundreds and hundreds of people had showed up to wait on line. it would later come to light that they were only provided 1,000 initial doses by the federal government. for a city that has at least half a million self-identifying queer people?? gimme a break. anyway, i tried to take the situation in stride, because what else could i do? but i was already kind of upset by the way things were rolled out. i’ll let the evidence speak for itself:

i resolved to get an appointment as soon as more doses were available and continued on with the rest of my weekend. it was nyc pride, so i was partying and spending time with my friends. i had fun! i had sex! gasp. 🏳️‍🌈

a few days later, on the following tuesday, i started to feel a little…burn, one could say. this wasn’t exactly surprising, as i had been sexually active over the weekend, so i made an appointment with my doctor to get an sti panel, which i completed the next day. i was expecting to get the results in a few days, take some antibiotics, and go on my merry way.

but the emerging pathogens landscape had different plans for me. on wednesday night, i started feeling sore, and i woke up on thursday morning with a raging fever, having sweat through my sheets during the night. for the entirety of the next three days, i was trapped in the throes of an undulating pattern of fever, chills, and body-wide aches and pains. the highest my temperature got was 102. i thought that maybe i was just unlucky and had additionally contracted covid over pride weekend, but i tested negative on rapid for three days straight.

i knew that something was wrong because sexually transmitted infections don’t normally cause fevers or other systemic symptoms. there is a subtype of chlamydia, called lymphogranuloma venereum, that can cause flu-like symptoms and swollen lymph nodes if the infection progresses. but i was skeptical and also desperate for answers, so i started doing some meticulous research on the cdc website (for healthcare professionals, oops) about monkeypox. a lot of what i was seeing on the screen about the “prodrome” stage of monkeypox illness was matching up with what i was experiencing. fever, headache, muscle aches, chills, exhaustion, swollen lymph nodes, all lasting multiple days. the only thing missing was…the actual pox.

i made my doctor aware of my concerns in the most pre-med way possible. i’m kind of insufferable sometimes:

the following day, on saturday night, my fever finally broke, and i started to feel better. the burning was still bothering me a bit, but i felt optimistic…until i woke up on sunday with five red splotches on my arms and fingers.

as the spots appeared, the burning morphed into outright pain. and over the course of the day, i literally watched as more and more spots appeared all over my body in real time. i ended up with more than a dozen by day’s end, and the early spots had started to take on a pimply, pustular appearance. this basically confirmed exactly what i had been afraid of: i had monkeypox.

given that it was the fourth of july weekend, there wasn’t much i could do. but because i’m pretty well connected with the infectious disease academic community at my school, i was able to text one of my coworkers and ask his opinion on what i was going through. he agreed that it was likely monkeypox, and he set up an appointment for me to come in first thing tuesday morning for testing.

at this point, nyc health was only capable of performing ten monkeypox tests per day. each test had to be approved by the department before doctors could take swabs and send them in, so i was very lucky to be able to be one of those tests. that number is set to increase, as some commercial labs have now been allowed to institute monkeypox testing protocols, but the testing backlog is immense. as of writing this post, five days after my test, i technically still do not have a positive orthopoxvirus test.* this means that my case, which is twelve days old at this point, may still not be included in the official tally of monkeypox cases. the scope of this outbreak is truly much larger than we initially realized, which is part of why i’m trying to spread the word and do my part to help rein it in.

*update as of 7/11: my test has officially come back positive for orthopoxvirus.

the pain started to become so intense that i was practically spending all day in the bathtub. the only thing that helped me feel better was soaking in a warm bath with lavender epsom salts. in related news, i can no longer stand the scent of lavender. i brought my laptop into the bathroom with me and watched everything everywhere all at once (2022), which made me emotional. and then i started thinking about my ex and how if we hadn’t broken up recently i probably wouldn’t have monkeypox. and all of those things together made me sob, and i sat in the bathtub on the fourth of july like that for a very long time. i was like…is this rock bottom? i felt like kristen wiig in bridesmaids (2011). i’m definitely in my flop era. i guess it can only go up from here.

later that night, i put on a mask and went up to my roof to watch the fireworks, though i wasn’t feeling particularly patriotic. i was overcome by an extreme loneliness, and even though i don’t really like fireworks, there was something so beautiful about them to me this year: the colors, the way they illuminated the dark surfaces around me, the ephemerality of their beauty. beautiful moments in our lives bring us joy, but they rarely last forever. we have to enjoy them while we have them.

a group of my neighbors were gathered a few roofs over. “happy fourth of july!” one woman shouted to me. i wanted to retort, what’s so happy about this godforsaken country? but instead i decided to be nice and say it back. i didn’t tell them i was wearing a mask because i had monkeypox. i figured that might bring down the vibe.

by the time i came into the hospital the following day to get my lesions swabbed, clad in long sleeves, pants, and a mask even though it was 90 degrees outside, they had started to look like this:

by my best estimation, i had about 30 lesions in total, and they were all over my body: arms, hands, stomach, back, legs, buttcheeks, face, scalp, beneath my right eyebrow. i even had a few inside my mouth, on my gums and in the back of my throat. the current medical thinking behind the pain patients experience in sensitive areas is that some of the lesions may be internal, located on mucous membranes, and that’s why they hurt so goddamn much. this sort of thing — internal lesions — had not been seen with monkeypox in the past, but it’s a defining feature of this outbreak. the good thing about the rest of the lesions is that they weren’t painful or extremely itchy, despite being so unsightly.

something else of note is that i actually did have a concurrent bacterial sti alongside the ‘pox. who knows if that would’ve caused symptoms (oftentimes they don’t), but it’s important to remember that different infections can happen at the same time. just because someone has an sti doesn’t automatically rule out the possibility of monkeypox, and i’m grateful that my care team remembered that. shoutout to doxycycline.

in an incredible display of generosity, the coworker and friend who helped connect me to testing also offered up his home to me. i had been worried about potentially infecting my roommate, as we share a bathroom, and monkeypox is potentially transmitted via surfaces. (as a dna virus, its genetic material lends it a hardiness in the environment that rna viruses such as sars-cov-2 lack.) i had been meticulously disinfecting every surface in our bathroom after i used it, but i was worried. my friend’s apartment has a guest room and second bathroom, so i wouldn’t have to worry about cross-contamination. it was the dream scenario for monkeypox isolation, so i took him up on his offer, and that’s where i currently sit writing this post. i truly don’t know what i would have done without his hospitality and his dedication to helping me get the care that i needed.

the following day, i went back to the hospital to begin a fourteen-day course of tecovirimat, also known as tpoxx. this drug was approved in 2018 for treatment of smallpox disease, which has been eradicated worldwide since the 80s but is still a bioterrorism threat. aside from being a very sexy-looking molecule, tecovirimat has a unique, orthopoxvirus-specific mechanism of action that lends itself to having relatively few side effects, which can include headache and nausea. it hasn’t been used in very many people, which is why the cdc is asking all the patients who take it for monkeypox to collect data on the course of their illness and how they are feeling.

one of the major problems with tpoxx, however, is that its oral absorption is dependent upon a fatty meal. the people running the trial at the hospital told me that i had to take the medication immediately after a fatty meal consisting of at least 600 calories and 25 grams of fat — every twelve hours. “don’t plan on dieting for the next two weeks!” the coordinator cheekily told me in an email. i tried to get peanut butter delivered but apparently jif is having a gigantic recall because of a salmonella problem in their supply nationwide. dear pathogenic microorganisms: can we catch a fucking break, please? i ordered almond butter instead.

the process of enrolling in the tpoxx trial was fairly detailed. after signing some consent forms (which allow the cdc and related research groups to use my information and samples for further research), a thorough physical exam was conducted, including photographing and measuring my lesions. i also had bloodwork performed to establish a baseline picture of my health. the delivery of the drug to me was extremely precise; it has to be accounted for every step of the way. but i was able to take home a two-week supply and begin taking it that evening. i got some mcdonald’s — as a treat! my appetite had been absent for most of the past week anyway. i was also given a prescription for ketorolac (aka toradol), basically a beefed up version of ibuprofen, for the pain i was experiencing.

as soon as i reached day two of tpoxx treatment, i was convinced that it was a wonder drug. some of my earliest lesions continued to look like this…

…but as for the rest? they started to quite literally disappear. a group of three lesions that had appeared on my back, which the doctors had identified as the largest on my body, completely flattened out and almost disappeared back into my skin. some of the other lesions still looked pustular, but they were shrinking in size. the combination of tpoxx +toradol has made it so that i can sleep, i can focus, and i can start to feel human again. i’m only taking baths twice a day now, and i am starting to feel hungrier than i have been at any point in this illness. as i write, some of those same lesions now look like this (on day five of tpoxx):

i still have a bit of a long road ahead of me. even though i’m extremely grateful for the lesions that are going away, we have to assume that i will remain contagious until the last of my spots scabs over, falls off, and grows a new layer of skin. there’s no telling how long that will take. but after a week and a half of intense pain in combination with the psychological stress of being an incubator of the plague, any news is good news. and i’m so grateful for the steady progress that i’m making, no matter how slow it may be.

part 2. the diatribe.

it’s very interesting being adjacent to the medical community but not exactly a part of it. it allows me to know a decent amount about it but not be swayed by my participation in the establishment. i’m not sure how common the knowledge of this process is, but the way that doctors diagnose and treat their patients is by utilizing a tool called the differential diagnosis.

basically, a doctor talks to a patient to collect as much information about them and their symptoms as possible. the more information, the better. this is why, depending on your doctor, you have to answer questions like: have you traveled lately? what’s your sex life like? do you have any pets? which is your favorite streaming service? (just kidding about that last one. hbomax is the correct answer, though.) after the inquisition, the doctor will conduct a body exam of variable comprehensiveness, ranging from peeking at your eyes, ears, and throat to doing a full physical.

after the data collection stage, the doctor will then create a mental (or physical) list of all the possible conditions that could cause or explain the symptoms in this patient, given the information we know about them. this list is the differential diagnosis. once the differential is established, the doctor can start eliminating options from the list. most times, the doctor will order labs such as nucleic acid tests on swab samples or bloodwork to collect more information. this will help them eliminate conditions from the differential or provide support that will move a condition higher up on the likelihood list. in an ideal situation, the doctor is able to exclude all but one cause of the symptoms, and the explanation that remains is your official diagnosis. once the diagnosis is made, a treatment plan can be established. yay! we love medicine.

for good reason, monkeypox was not very high on the differential for my symptoms two weeks ago. there are a lot of things that can cause fever and aches and fatigue and swollen lymph nodes. there was no explicit reason to believe that my slightly scandalous symptoms were connected to those very common ones. yet, my case is an example of why representation and diversity in healthcare are so important. i am gay (in case you missed it before), and my doctor is not, though he does a pretty good job of providing culturally competent care. as a gay man in new york, i had been hearing about monkeypox in the ether. i was hyper-aware of it, and i had even heard of some friends of friends who had contracted the illness the week prior, even though the “official” case count in the united states was ~40 at that point. in short, it was on my radar, but it wasn’t on my doctor’s. and if it wasn’t on his radar, then how was it going to show up on his mental differential? wait, mental differential rhymes and is cute. i’m going to trademark it before anyone steals it. mental differential™!

this is all to say: i was in a pretty unique situation to realize what was happening to me and to advocate for myself. i am literally an infectious diseases researcher. i had been informing myself about monkeypox for months. i work at an academic institution that gives me access to some of the best doctors in the country — some of whom i rub shoulders with on a daily basis. and i’m a gay man who is very online and keeps up with what’s happening in nyc queer social networks. all of those factors uniquely positioned me to be like “hmmmmmmmmmmmmaybe this is monkeypox” and to have the ability to clearly communicate why i thought that was the case.

this outbreak, as with most things in life, is yet another manifestation of privilege at work. from the inequities caused by a lack of intentionality with the vaccine rollout, to the existence of people like me, who are able to pull strings due to their line of work and have their concerns addressed, the brokenness of our healthcare system is once again laid bare. i know i can’t solve this problem on my own, but there are small steps i can accomplish: being a loud voice to demand that the government does a better job of addressing the outbreak, and forwarding resources and advice to everyone that i can.

something that has continually amazed me during my half-decade of living in new york is the way that lgbtqia+ community members show up for each other. i know i sometimes complain about the pressures i feel to look and act a certain way, but the reality is that the queer community has looked out for me and supported me in ways that i never imagined were possible.

this whole monkeypox debacle is just another manifestation of how queer people are there for each other when societal systems fail us. from the first day of the vaccine rollout, people took to the internet, sharing information about appointments and the vaccine clinic and amplifying the messaging put out by the nyc department of health. people’s twitter timelines were spreading the word more efficiently than any marketing campaign. contrary to the pervasive anti-vaccine sentiment that seems to hold many americans in its grip, the queer community was hungry to protect themselves and do what needed to be done. a smallpox vaccine? sure. give it to me. as long as it keeps me safe. i credit this partially to the sex positivity of the community in general. many people are used to talking about sexually transmitted infections, so there’s a lower barrier to saying “hey, i think i have something, you should be on the lookout and get yourself checked out too,” as well as taking tangible steps to ensure that our health is protected.

once i actually came down with monkeypox, i pulled a very on-brand move and immediately posted about it on twitter and instagram. aside from feeding my ridiculous main character syndrome, i had another motivation for doing so: i had a feeling that i wasn’t alone. within a few hours, a friend of mine who lives in dc shared that he was dealing with monkeypox as well. he told me about his experience, preparing me for the horrors to come, and shared his tips and tricks for how to best manage the pain. i’m not sure what i would’ve done without him.

then, i think about my friend and colleague who coordinated my medical care and let me stay in his home. he and his husband are gay men, and their hospitality and care has made a world of difference for my physical and mental wellbeing during my convalescence. i’m eternally grateful for all of my friends and loved ones who provided assistance, whether it was sending me something on venmo, offering to doordash me food, or extending moral support, all of which made me feel incredibly cared for. i don’t deserve the people who’ve found their way into my life — y’all are the absolute best.

finally, i think about all the people who’ve responded positively or inquisitively to my social media posts about my experience. friends from all areas of my life and all sexualities have sent me well wishes and thanked me for my vulnerability, but i feel like the replies with the most gravitas are the ones from fellow lgbtq+ folks. they’re learning what to look for. they’re learning where to go if they feel sick. they’re learning how to advocate for themselves. i’m just another link in the chain of us taking care of each other. people cared for me, and i want to do that for other people in the best way that i can. knowledge is power, and so is community.

i titled this section “the diatribe,” and you’re probably wondering when the diatribe is coming. he’s just been really gushy about loving the people in his life, you might think, and you’d be right. but this is the part where i talk about how just because the queer community can and does take care of ourselves, that doesn’t mean that we should have to.

it’s often a bad idea to compare health crises, even when they’re caused by the same type of microorganism. aids is not covid-19, which is not monkeypox, though they were all caused by poorly understood viruses in their heyday. but the lgbtq+ community has a history of taking matters into our own hands when it comes to health. there are so many examples throughout history of queer people (and their allies) leading the charge to protect themselves when the government refused to take action. for me, it was surreal to experience this, in a way, in real time.

first, the government is failing us when it comes to vaccine access. the strategic national stockpile contains tens of thousands of doses of jynneos, the newest generation of fda-approved smallpox vaccine, and millions of doses of acam2000, an older type of vaccine that should only be used in certain immunocompetent populations. despite this, and despite new york being one of the national hotspots of monkeypox cases and an international crossroads, to date the city has only been allotted 7,000 doses of the jynneos vaccine. each time vaccine appointments have been made available, they are snatched up within minutes. it’s giving hunger games, and that makes me very uncomfortable.

second, i personally feel that the government dropped the ball on recognizing the seriousness of the european monkeypox outbreak and acting accordingly. we saw reporting from overseas in may, but the first vaccines weren’t made publicly available until nearly the end of june. why is it that i, a 26-year-old pharmacology grad student, was able to look at what was happening in europe with monkeypox and realize that there was going to be a problem, but the public health agency of the “greatest country in the world” didn’t? or, is there just so much bureaucracy and politicking that it took too long to spring into action?

furthermore, the lack of testing infrastructure for a known virus for which there are vaccines and treatments is simply egregious to me. the scope of the problem could have been better understood with a more robust testing program. i personally feel that many gay men did not act like monkeypox was a real threat — myself included — because it seemed like it was relatively rare, on the scale of perhaps a dozen cases scattered across the country. but it is quickly becoming clear that that was not the case, and our underestimation of the situation, fueled by a narrative of extremely sparse infections, was immense.

i am continually frustrated by how public health agencies act when it comes to controlling infectious diseases. a cautious strategy of “wait and see” is suboptimal and simply does not account for how infectious diseases work. by the time a sick person is identified, they have already exposed, and potentially infected, many other people around them. proactive action, such as vaccinating vulnerable populations before an illness becomes fully entrenched, is the way to prevent disease. you’d think that the centers for disease control and prevention would operate this way. they didn’t do much to control monkeypox when it would have been easiest, and they surely didn’t prevent it. when will we learn? sometimes, i fear the answer is never. emerging viral pathogens are a threat that is not going away, particularly in the era of climate change and globalization, and i am afraid that our government will continue making the same mistakes over and over again. in fairness, i do not work at the cdc, and i have nary a clue about what goes on there on a day-to-day basis. but as a scientist, a gay man, and a citizen of this country, i feel confident in saying this: while the cdc has many successful programs and performs a lot of important work, it has not done enough about monkeypox and is not doing enough about monkeypox. whether they will do enough about monkeypox remains to be seen. humorously, the strategic national stockpile is supposedly capable of responding to a national bioterrorism crisis within twelve hours. after what has transpired during this outbreak, i’m more than a bit skeptical of that.

don’t get me wrong: it’s easy to critique the cdc, but it’s not entirely their fault. an additional way in which our federal government fails to protect its citizens is by underfunding public health services, including the cdc. i can complain all i want about the vaccine rollout, but i know the reality is that health departments, particularly local ones, are doing their best with the resources they have. they likely don’t have the staff to keep up with increased demand and carry out a comprehensive contact tracing program. for example, since my orthopoxvirus test still hasn’t officially come back positive*, i still haven’t been notified by the doh to ask about my close contacts. by the time they do so, i’ll be two weeks out from the start of my illness — way too long to do anything productive. but it really isn’t their fault. they’re operating within a broken system — a system that receives disproportionately little money for the importance of the work it does.

*update as of 7/11: my test has officially come back positive for orthopoxvirus.

monkeypox takes a long time to run its course, so i’ve had a lot of time to think. and at this point, now that i’m feeling better, i’m pretty pissed. i’m sad and i’m angry. i want to be able to do something. i don’t want other people to have to suffer like i did. this was preventable, and i still hold out hope that it’s solvable. but how?

part 3. the duty.

family, particularly chosen family, takes care of each other. i’m so fortunate to have had so many people take care of me during this time of tribulation. how am i going to do my part and pay it forward? well, i have a few ideas.

1. education. i’ve already started doing this — by making exquisitely long posts describing my physical illness and my thoughts on this whole debacle on instagram. by tweeting. by writing this piece. i will continue to do so, even if people get annoyed with me!! it’s important!! you can find all of my unhinged yet informative posts in a story highlight on my instagram profile (@kyleplanckton).

2. connection to resources. i’ve been able to forward the contact information for the infectious diseases clinic at my institution to multiple people, who will hopefully be able to acquire tpoxx under the expanded use protocol and find relief from their symptoms asap. through my social networks, i’ve also been able to get the information of a few other institutions that are doing the same thing. furthermore, i’ve been sharing links with crowdsourced information about symptom relief and vaccine appointment availability on my social media as well. see my instagram highlight for more, or feel free to dm me!

3. community-based action. one of the things that has meant the most to me during my illness is the way that my friends have offered to help me out with whatever i needed. i didn’t take too much advantage of it, but it was beyond comforting to know that i had people in my corner. i did have one of my friends (thanks, kenny) snag me a mcgriddle this morning when i needed a fatty meal for my morning tpoxx dose and seamless canceled my order! but this whole scenario has me thinking about ways to help others in our community affected by monkeypox isolation. for a lot of people who rely on hourly pay, the requirement of an isolation period that can last upward of two weeks is financially injurious. with covid-19, certain governments instituted a mandatory paid sick leave policy to allow employees to get better and prohibit the spread. there is no such program in place for monkeypox, and it doesn’t seem like there is a plan to institute one anytime soon.

i want to be able to help people who may be in precarious financial situations exacerbated by their bout with monkeypox. i would be more than willing to pick up and deliver groceries or even sponsor some meals/expenses for people who live in my neighborhood and are suffering from this disease. i have seen a few gofundme pages, but i wish there were a centralized way to connect people who need help and people who can give it. if you happen to have experience with mutual aid-type organizations or know someone who does, please contact me.i’d love to get the ball rolling on something like this as soon as we can!

4. governmental advocacy. the power of personal stories is significant. my experience is only one story, but i believe that i can convey it in a compelling way. over the next day or so, i am writing to my elected officials (local, state, and federal) in an attempt to share my experience with monkeypox. importantly, i want to emphasize how i wanted a vaccine but couldn’t get one, and i want to underscore how i truly believe that access to tpoxx rapidly improved the course of my illness. as a pharmacologist-in-training, i know that collecting data on a novel drug is of extreme importance, and there are ethical considerations at play when thinking about making a drug with limited data in patients widely available. but the strategic national stockpile contains millions of doses of tpoxx, and many people i know are unable to get this game-changing medication because of red tape and a lack of connections. people shouldn’t have to go to an ivy league medical center in order to get the best care possible, and this needs to change. based on my experience and anecdotes from other people, i truly believe that tpoxx has the ability to dramatically reduce the suffering endured by monkeypox patients as well as potentially curb chains of transmission if it’s given early enough. we can control this outbreak. it’s not too late yet, as long as we make a commitment to actually employ all of the tools (testing, vaccination, treatment) that we have at our disposal.

furthermore, i plan on becoming involved with RESPND-MI, an “LGBTQ+ community-led survey of monkeypox symptoms and networks among gay and bisexual men in New York City.” see their website for more information and to donate to this community-based organization working toward the goal of containing the outbreak.

i still don’t know exactly how i got monkeypox. i am pretty confident i got it from a physical interaction during pride, but i’m not sure which one it was. this outbreak will only continue to grow larger unless the people in power decide to take dramatic action. until then, i’ll be doing what i can in my local community to continue to educate people and help connect them to care.

despite all the complaints i have, there are a few glimmers of hope. health department messaging and awareness campaigns on social media are in full swing. the cdc released non-judgmental guidelines for how to engage in less risky social and sexual behavior during the outbreak. there is a lot more information about the disease course online, and there is relatively robust guidance for healthcare providers on how to diagnose and treat monkeypox here, including how to request a course of tpoxx for patients. people can use these resources to inform themselves and advocate for themselves if they think they are sick. and importantly, i’m seeing a shift in the way gay men are talking about monkeypox online and irl: they’re listening. they’re learning. and they’re taking it seriously.

the government of this country has an abhorrent track record when it comes to dealing with health issues that affect the lgtbq+ community, and they’re not off to a great start this time around. but i feel hopeful that maybe, just maybe, this time will be a little bit better. and if i can make any difference at all, even if it’s just helping one other person, i want to contribute to that.

thanks for reading this, thanks for supporting me, and thanks for helping me spread awareness about the 2022 monkeypox outbreak. my dms are always open if you would like information or resources, have questions, or just want to chat!

be well, y’all ❤