Toronto dancer tells of excruciating pain, isolation and stigma of monkeypox infection

Peter Kelly was still bouncing back from COVID-19 when a case of monkeypox gave him the "worst pain" of his life.

Peter Kelly was still bouncing back from COVID-19 when a case of monkeypox gave him the “worst pain” of his life.

The 28-year-old Toronto resident had only just returned to work as a dancer and physical trainer in late May when he developed a fever.

“I was so delirious,” he said in an interview, as he described the agonizing symptoms associated with the disease and the sense of isolation during about three weeks of home quarantine.

“I must have been really sick and I didn’t even know. For two days I didn’t really move, I would just go to the washroom and go back to bed and sleep some more. It was super high fever and night chills. I was wearing a winter jacket in bed, I was so cold.”

Kelly’s fever broke on the third day and soon after he said he noticed red rash. He said he immediately began to search the web for what the rash might be.

“You start Googling this and that’s the worst thing you could ever do.”

Doctors suspected it was herpes, which Kelly said “freaked” him out.

“That started to really affect my mental health because you can’t cure it. You can just control that over the years.”