I got mono sometime around Christmas of my junior year in high school, but I was never sick in a strep-throat way, so I never went to the doctor and no one knew I had mono. I spent the next five months sleeping through at least two classes a day at school (usually more), passing out for about four hours as soon as I got home from school, waking up for a few hours to eat, shower, and do homework, then going to bed. Every day. I also pretty much quit all extra-curricular activites and hardly did anything outside of school. My psychiatrist thought that the fatigue was a side effect of my depression medication, so I had my dosage switched around before, finally, getting a mono test in May.
By that point, it was almost the end of the school year, so I just kept going to school (I ended up maintaining a B average). Over the summer I guess I recovered (never saw a doctor, because the one I was supposed to see only took patients over 18, and the only appointment we could get would have been about a month before my 18th birthday).
I had something that was probably mono but for some reason I forget now to do with when they took blood samples they couldn’t pin it down to that, when I was in tenth grade.
The biggest thing for me was that my family believed me, that I was really physically sick, and cared for me. People outside my family, teachers and friends, had a hard time dealing with the fact that it did indeed take months for me to recover. It actually took a couple of years for me to feel fully up to scratch energy-wise, and that was a tough time, when people were just fed up with the fact that I needed a lot of sleep and implied I was lazy. That was really hurtful and I still have issues now with needing not to appear sick even when I am.
So in addition to the wonderful care you’re taking of your son, do keep in mind (as I’m sure you are) that it’s tough emotionally for a teenager not to have the energy they and everyone else expects of them.
I ended up with glandular fever a couple of years ago. I was completely out of action - unable to talk, throat filled with broken glass, pus, white spots on my tonsils, barely could breathe, eat or drink - for about two weeks. I spent nearly that whole two weeks in bed. After that it took me about four or five weeks to feel completely better, and not completely worn out every time I went to work for the day. I don’t know if you can get it over there, but over here we’ve got a “flu remedy” called lemsip. It’s a powdered lemon and honey drink that you mix with hot/boiling water for sore throats. The one I got had paracetemol included, and god it felt so good. I was just about living on it for the first week that I had this thing.
I got mono in August before my senior year. I caught it because I had injured my toe on vacation and it just wouldn’t stop bleeding (plus my eyes were swelling shut each morning). I had the throat swelling shut shortly thereafter. I had to get up each morning and force myself to drink juice and eat applesauce to open the throat enough to get solid foods in. (Let’s not even mention the pyrotechnic vomiting - how it happened, I’ll never know since I was barely eating anything.) I took it easy when school started back up in the fall, but had a nasty relapse triggered by my wisdom teeth surgery.
I second (or third) what I saw an earlier poster mention - I was very tired, but didn’t sleep an excessive amount. I also lost 10 pounds, and I was already petite (Went down to 5’2", 105 pounds) A friend of mine had it before me and had similar symptoms, plus, since she got it in the middle of the school year, she didn’t rest like she should have, and developed chronic fatigue syndrome.
I don’t have much advice on bulking back up, but I would suggest smoothies with vitamin supplements crushed up in them, mostly because they’re tasty.
When I got mono, I spent a week in bed delirious with fever, then slowly, ever so slowly got back into action. A month after diagnosis, playing half a soccer game would wipe me out for a day or two. Which was pretty sad, since I was used to a hard practice every week, a game or two, and I used to bike everywhere.
It was a full year before I was really myself again.
Mono stories are like wisdom tooth stories. Each one is always a greater horror story than the last. I, too, had a bad case of mono. Big push at the end of my senior year of high school, a whirlwind trip, followed by immediate start of college. Two weeks into it, I was clobbered by mono. I had all the bad diagnoses from various doctors and hospitals - cold, flu, etc. My fever went to 106 degrees and stayed there.
My parents were convinced I was dying from some strange disease. They strong-armed the doc into giving me antibiotics. Who ever said taking these with mono was bad was RIGHT. I not only got worse, but I discovered I was allergic to them. I turned purple from head to toe - like a big bruise.
The doc said that mono always has a secondary infection. Mine was hepatitis. He said that if it had pneumonia, I would have surely been dead. I came close enough.
The doc was filled with all sorts of “death references” from what little I can recall from that summer. He convinced me to drop out of college for the semester - “If you carry a book like that one across campus, your spleen will burst and you will die”. Things like that.
The fever was bad. I lost my memory of much of that summer. Pretty much everything from July until September.
I slept - and slept - and slept. I lost so much weight that I looked like I had been a starving prisoner somewhere. They fed me “sustical” in anything I would eat - just to get calories into my body. Man, did that stuff ever burn going down. My throat was raw - tonsils swelled so big they burst.
Nasty, nasty stuff. I would not wish mono on anyone.
(Did I mention that a girl I kissed at the end of high school got so mad when she found out that I was hospitalized with mono that she did not speak to me for 2 years? LOL)
I had mono when I was 19. I was really tired for about a week, before I finally went to the ER about 7 pm on a Tuesday night. I was diagnosed right away, and admitted to the hospital for a day & half. There was some concern that it may have made its way to my liver. They gave me an IV right away, and some steriod drugs, and I felt 100% better.
Returned to work one week after getting out of the hospital. I remember being absolutely exhausted after about an hour at work. I took a lot of naps after work for 3-4 months until I fully recoverd.
According to my mom, I wasn’t all that sick. I was kind-of listless for a few days, and I didn’t eat. They made me take naps at day care, even though the other five year-olds didn’t have to take naps, which made me mad. I used to sneak books from the school-agers’ room to read while I was supposed to be sleeping. I don’t think I was really sick for longer than a week.
I’d like to give a very heartful thank you to everyone who posted about their personal experiences with this. After my son got up today, he acutally went with Hubby on a paying job clearing brush and limbs off of an 8 acre lot. After they got home, son promptly ate two chicken fajitas and a bowl of mashed potatoes with hot cheese. Before he went to bed he ate 3 small snack size bags pf potato chips and a two-egg omelette with ham, cheese, and onions. Not to mention that today he drank a gallon (yes) of orange juice.
It helps immensely to hear the on the ground truth of just what can happen.
I’ve advised him as The Chao and Jelymag suggested to stay away from alcohol and acitomenaphien (sp?). In looking back, I think this spell was related to partying with friends over the weekend… there’s a chance he might have indulged in a beer or two
He says he’s going to eat like sixty when he feels like it, then rest, lay up and drink Gatrorade and juice when he doesn’t.
Another testimony of the short and sweet version of Mono. My son aged 16 was feeling a bit crook, sore throat and swollen glands etc on day 1. By day 2, his neck had grown out to elephantine proportions. Day 3 I took him to the doc, blood tests came back pos. for Glandular Fever (Infectious Mononucleosis). Day 4 he lay on the couch, drifting in and out of consciousness, only waking when I brought him Lucozade and paracetamol. This pattern was repeated on days 5, 6, and slightly less on the 7th.
Day 8, he got up, headed to the shower, got dressed and went to school feeling ever so chipper.
That was well over a year ago, and he’s been absolutely fine since.
Crap! That’s almost word-for-word my experience with Kaiser!
I was in the hospital overnight, though, and missed something like three weeks of work, but then, I went through two or three rounds of antibiotics (and never a strep test) and got steadily worse over a 2-3 three week period (I don’t remember a whole lot from then). I do remember that I was unable to drive or even walk very far and that when the doc finally decided I needed to go the hospital (btw, that doc never did figure out it was mono), he was going to call an ambulance; don’t remember if he did, though.
I must have had a mild case. I was at a party on the first Friday night of the semester, and all of the sudden started to sweat buckets and feel very, very tired. I went home and went to bed, and still felt tired when I woke up the next morning. I was perfectly able to get up and go to classes, but not much else. I went to the student health center, and they did a mono test (and made me walk almost a mile each way just so they could tell me, in person, you have mono!)
I think I continued sick for about three weeks total. In the evening, I would shiver as my temperature went up. In the morning, I would drip sweat (literally) as my temperature went down. I was very, very thirsty all the time (I got into the habit of having a big glass of water by my bed, then). And I was tired, and didn’t do much but go to class and go back to my room.
The only other symptom, and I did find this mentioned in a medical text somewhere, is that my eyelids would swell overnight. There were a few mornings when I actually couldn’t see until I had sat up for half an hour.
I was in Air Force boot camp with a guy who got mono the day before graduation, went to medical hold (where I met him) and refused a waiver. That meant that he got up every morning and ran, did pushups and situps and pullups, etc. with the rest of the squadron, and marched all over the base, only restricted by having to wear a filter mask and having his own table at meals. He was legally guaranteed the waiver from everything–sit in bed all day–if he wanted one, but refused it.
I have a lot of experience with mono. My daughter has had it twice (at 13 and 16, and my son once (at 11); in fact they both had it at the same time.
It sounds like your son isn’t one of the lucky ones that bounce right back after a couple of weeks. It manifests differently in different people. Are his neck glands visibly huge? Can the doctor feel an enlarged spleen? If either is the case, he needs to be extremely careful of injury. My son’s neck became so large they put him on prednisone for a short time, because they were concerned about a blocked airway. For a spleen, rough-housing with friends is a no-no, as are contact sports.
My daughter basically stayed home for six months each time she had it. She kept up with schoolwork even when she could barely raise her head. As a parent all I could do was police her rest and nutrition, and support her during frequent meltdowns. The return to regular activity is a very slow process when it goes on for so long, and it’s really hard to know when it’s “over”.
For nutrition, I suggest fruity smoothies for your son, who lacks appetite. Also, I had a lot of luck with supermarket bakery pumpkin pies and sweet potato pies, which have eggs, milk, tons of vitamins, and are surprisingly nutritious. Also, rice pudding, etc. worked well for them.
I wish you luck. Standing by, unable to help, is hard for a parent. But your presence gives your child more strength than you realize.
My aunt, a wonderful MD, got to see me “urgently” as a teenager - my throat was painfully swollen, it was awful… She ran the swab for strep - in those days, in Canadia, it got shipped to the lab and would be back in 24-48 hours. She said this:
“Well, here - we’ll put you on antibiotics. If it’s strep, you’ll feel SO much better in 24 or 48 hours. If it’s mono, you’ll likely break into a huge rash. Stop the antibiotics, and voila, diagnosis, right there.”
Turned out it WAS mono.
Tell your son to be nice to his spleen. Poor spleen. It takes a beating during this thing.
Interesting. When I had it, nearly 30 years ago, I was told that strep throat (confirmed with a culture) was often the major symptom. In fact that’s what brought me to the college infirmary. They did a throat culture (for strep) and blood test (for mono); both came back positive. So they treated the strep with antibiotics and the mono with rest and periodic followup.
I was lucky in that I had a pretty minor case of mono - was feeling back to normal within a couple of weeks. It helped that I was “just” in college, not yet taking any killer courses, so I didn’t overstress myself too much.
Not to mention that today he drank a gallon (yes) of orange juice.
Poor spleen. It takes a beating during this thing.