By Jacqueline Howard; CNN
When Dr. Nesli Basgoz met her patient for the first time in May, he had been admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital with symptoms that were quite common for many infectious diseases -- fever, rash, fatigue, sweats.
Basgoz and her colleagues at the hospital tested the patient for chickenpox. He was negative. They tested him for syphilis. He was negative.
The doctors still treated him with antibiotics and antivirals that are used for common infections while they waited for his various test results -- but his condition did not improve in response to those treatments.
As days progressed, Basgoz noticed that the patient's rash changed in appearance. At that moment, she knew he did not have a common illness.
Her mind raced, putting together pieces of a medical puzzle.
"Some of the skin lesions, called the pustules, started to have indentations in them, and that's a feature that can be seen in pox viruses," Basgoz, the hospital's associate chief and clinical director of the infectious disease division, told CNN.
"The combination of not improving when he was treated for common things; the results of testing for common infections coming back negative; and some change in the appearance of the rash -- all sort of raised the possibility that this could be a pox virus," she said. That was her ah-ha moment.
The patient, whom Basgoz described as "a relatively young and healthy man," had traveled to Canada before becoming the first person to be confirmed with monkeypox in the United States this year as part of an ongoing global outbreak. So far in the outbreak, global health officials have identified more than 1,200 patients across at least 31 countries, as of Friday.
Continue reading on CNN.com.