A man said he felt like "a walking zombie" after catching monkeypox on a trip to London.
Wesley Williams, a waiter at Cheshire Oaks, said he went into work the day after returning from his weekend trip but quickly became unwell and could barely stand up. The 34-year-old was eventually sent home when he almost collapsed while serving customers.
He told the ECHO that the next day, spots started to appear on his body 30 minutes after he started his shift. Wesley said: "I was completely shattered. I was so knackered I couldn’t stand up properly.
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“I was a walking zombie and I really could not move. I had to sit down to take food orders."
Wesley said he joked about having monkeypox so his manager sent him home to get tested straight away. He said: "I thought I was just tired from London so I didn’t say anything straight away. It was my first day back from the trip and within the first hour, I literally nearly collapsed outside.
“The day after I wasn’t tired at all. I was feeling fine but I had started to see some spots appearing around my body.
“I didn’t think anything of it. I joked in work and said ‘maybe I’ve got monkeypox' but my manager sent me home to get tested straight away.” Wes had swabs taken of his spots in Chester and it was confirmed he had monkeypox which he believes he caught at a sauna.
Wes could only eat soup for the first week because he got strep throat and his body was covered in small lumps. By the second week his lumps turned into angry rashes with blisters. It then spread across his chest and thighs.
After two weeks and two days the blisters started to heal and the rash started to calm.
He said: "“Monkeypox drained me more than covid. “When I had Covid it felt like the sniffly flu to me.”
Wesley had to self-isolate for three weeks and was given no medication.
Monkeypox is a rare infection that’s mainly spread by wild animals in parts of west or central Africa. The risk of catching it in the UK tends to be low but as of Tuesday, July 19, the North West was in the top four for cases of monkeypox in the nation, according to GOV.UK.
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