After he and his partner had monkeypox, fitness trainer warns 'how much of a joke this isn't'
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The pain was so excruciating that a prescribed opioid didn't even help – that was the experience of a popular fitness trainer after he contracted monkeypox last month.
As CBS 2's Jackie Kostek reported Friday night, Carson Twitchell has a message now that he has recovered.
"Just watching your partner suffer was just the worst," Twitchell said. "I wouldn't wish any part of what we experienced on my worst enemy."
It has been about a month since Twitchell and his partner contracted monkeypox, and he says just this week, he feels like he's fully recovered.
"That's why we decided to go viral, because we wanted people to know how much of a joke this isn't," Twitchell said.
Twitchell and his partner took to Instagram while in quarantine to share their experience, with the goal of spreading awareness and countering what he calls the "silly stigma" around the virus.
He said they both started developing symptoms about a week after they were exposed to the virus, from someone who did not appear to have symptoms.
"We didn't have any kind of a cough or a fever or chills or body aches or anything like that," Twitchell said. "Both of us had a couple of what looked like bug bites on our bodies."
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Days later, Twitchell's partner was tested for an STI and got a positive result for monkeypox. Twitchell was also diagnosed days after that.
He says the bumps were extremely itchy, but only became excruciatingly painful when they developed into lesions and sores.
"We eventually were prescribed an opioid, hydrocodone, and the opioid didn't even touch the pain," Twitchell said. "There was just absolutely no relief -- from an opioid."
Twitchell says what eventually did help was an antiviral medication used for smallpox called tecovirimat – which is sold under the brand name Tpoxx. Twitchell said the antivirals were prescribed because of the sensitive areas their lesions were in.
"That's another part of why we went viral," he said, "because finally, once we had gotten going on Tpoxx – and we did start to notice our lesions and our sores behaving differently in 24 hours - so it was just then that we kind of realized that people need to know, again, how much of a joke this isn't - and how hard we had to advocate for ourselves to just get the attention and medication that we desperately needed."