TRANSCRIPT
"It was pretty bad. Like, I say nine out of ten and I really mean nine out of ten. It wasn't like I was screaming but it got to the point, before I went to the emergency department, that I was like on the floor in agony."
35-year-old Melbourne man Jack recalling what he describes as a "genuinely traumatising" experience.
After attending some dance parties over the King's Birthday weekend, he noticed some sensitivity in his rectum and decided to have a sexual health screen.
It was mpox and within a few days he says the pain was excruciating.
Early attempts to control it didn't work with doctors prescribing a large range of drugs, including opiates and nerve pain medication.
Jack: "I was on six times the dose I was on when I started and that's when it finally started to have an effect."
Greg Dyett: "So they were throwing everything at you?"
Jack: "Yeah, totally. I have a photo of the amount of drugs that I was on when I left and it's like a whole bucket full of different things. I actually ended up on the anti-virals as well. They made a case because I was in such a huge amount of pain for so long that I was eligible for anti-virals - which are kind of only reserved for people who are like, you know, very, very sick or like immunosuppressed or anything like that. But yeah, it had kind of lasted so long that they were like 'I think it's smart that we put you on the anti-virals.'"
His mpox ordeal lasted far longer than he envisaged.
Jack: "This pain lasted for six weeks, like it was a really long slog."
Greg Dyett: "Six weeks?"
Jack: "Yep. Easily six weeks I was in pain."
A sexual health doctor says the length and severity of Jack's symptoms are uncommon.
Dr Tom Morley from Thorne Harbour Health in Melbourne says symptoms usually last 2 to 3 weeks, so Jack's case is out of the ordinary.
"That person is very unlucky. The majority of people we're seeing are probably sitting somewhere in the three week mark, starting out with some systemic features like a headache, fever, muscle ache followed on sometimes by the typical skin rash."
Australia has recorded at least 343 cases this year as of August 28 which is more than double the number during the last outbreak in 2022 when there were 144 cases.
The outbreak here is less severe than the type that's causing serious illness and deaths in Central Africa.
Dr Tom Morley says sexual transmission is primarily how mpox is being spread in Australia and LGBTIQ+ people are most at risk.
He says a two-dose mpox vaccination remains the best defence against getting a severe case.
"We see lots of people who have just had one vaccination, lots of people who have had both vaccinations, still presenting with symptoms but much less severe than had they not had the vaccinations. A lot of the people we're seeing now just have a few skin lesions or a little STI symptom that they wouldn't have necessarily even attributed to mpox."
"So upstairs here we've got 25 rooms. Different sized rooms, cubicles, all lockable. We have a couple of sling rooms."
That's Shane Gardner the general manager of sex-on-premises venue Wet on Wellington in Collingwood.
These days it caters for all genders but when it first opened more than 20 years ago it was exclusively for men who have sex with other men.
Sounds of spa bubbling
A spa on the ground floor along with a swimming pool, sauna, a steam room and a licensed bar.
Upstairs, it's somewhat of a maze.
"Finding your away around makes it interesting, it's not just like being in one boring room. More cubicles there. Here we have a jail. It can be closed. You can be watching porn on the screen."
During the first mpox outbreak in 2022, the venue put up warning signs encouraging people to get vaccinated and held on-site testing and vaccination clinics.
At the height of that outbreak, it noticed a 25 per cent drop in patronage over a two-week period.
Shane Gardner says the current outbreak hasn't had an impact on business.
He says after two meetings with the Victorian Department of Health, it's again warning its customers with mpox signage and has held testing and vaccination clinics.
"We formulated a plan to put the posters up and to and mitigate the problem. I think the government needs to throw more money at it to start with to the likes of Thorne Harbour Health because they're the main people who are driving it."
He says people should ensure they're fully vaccinated.
"Get vaccinated. Get vaccinated, you know, protect yourself. It's no different to a STD or HIV. Protect yourself. You might not care about anybody else but just protect yourself. If you protect yourself, then we're all going to be fine."
Victoria's Chief Health Officer Dr Clare Looker has encouraged at risk people to consider reducing their number of sexual partners and has encouraged them to keep contact details for contact tracing.
After his six-week ordeal with mpox, Jack, who is in a long term same-sex relationship, says he has no appetite for casual sex.
He says people should seriously consider the advice from the health authorities.
"I think it is kind of scary and if that's the way it's transmitted, then I think it's kind of responsible to just be aware of some of that stuff and be conscious of what you're doing, of course be double vaccinated, that's step one. That's the other thing that I kind of - sure, I got it while I was double vaccinated but who knows how much worse it could have been if I wasn't vaccinated, just like COVID."
