‘I literally screamed out loud in pain’: my two weeks of monkeypox hell

‘I’m pretty worried this is going to be another endemic disease, especially among gay men’ – Sebastian Kohn Photograph: Courtesy of Sebastian Kohn

I got monkeypox and it’s been a total nightmare.

When New York Pride festivities kicked off on 24 June, I was aware that monkeypox was an emerging issue – especially for gay men – but I was also under the impression that the number of cases in the city was relatively small. What I didn’t understand was how absolutely dismal testing capacity was: at that point, the city only had capacity to process ten tests a day.