It’s official. I have mono. At least I know why I’m sleeping 14-16 hours a day.
Actually, I don’t. I know that mononucleosis is caused by an infection by the Epstein-Barr virus. That’s it. That’s all I can find. What system of mine is the virus attacking to make me so frakkin’ tired?
Can any dopers here help me out?
Also, if any one has any advise on how to cope. My current strategy of “coffee, lots of coffee” is only getting me so far.
Dagummit - This was supposed to go to GQ. Would someone mind reporting it to a Mod for me?
Done.
And done.
You should sleep. Mono just has to go away on its own. Take what you can for the other symptoms, but get lots of rest. And go easy on the physical activity, because you can rupture your spleen. Oh, and it’s contagious.
I got mono in high school. I went to see my doctor before christmas, and got the call from the lab confirming mono christmas day. I slept all through christmas vacation.
You are tired because your cellular machinery is being hijacked to combat the virus, whose main job is to hijack your cellular machinery for its own nefarious ends–mainly replication.
The liver and lymphatic system (and certain white blood cells) are the main targets. Byproducts of the fight cause things like fever and muscle aches.
If your lymph nodes get huge, I think glucorticoids help and I’ll usually give a patient at short course of high dose methylprednisolone or equivalent.
Rest. I wouldn’t try to overcome the fatigue with stimulants, but I plead ignorance on that strategy. The spleen is sort of a giant lymph node, but it won’t rupture spontaneously. Try not to bang it around (fall down stairs; play football). It’s practically a reportable case for it to truly rupture spontaneously.
Give it three weeks to be feeling pretty good and six weeks to not know you had it. Most people who get mono (or CMV) never even know they had it. You could be an outlier to that rule of thumb, but then again, as a professor of mine used to say, “You could be acute Dengue fever…”
Your immune system, and pretty directly at that. The spleen is responsible for immune cell production, and the virus infects and starts forcing it to make some whacky versions of immune cells that don’t work. It somehow senses this, and tries to churn out the right ones as well, but it still keeps cranking out the defective ones. This uses a lot more resources than a healthy functioning spleen.
Also, some of us lucky mono sufferers (I’ve had it enough times that it’s now considered “Epstein-Barr Syndrome” instead of “you’ve got mono for the tenth time”) get hepititis (swelling of the liver) from it. Because the liver has a lot to do with red blood cell production, we get anemic on top of it. Anemia makes you tired because there are less red blood cells carrying oxygen to and wastes away from cells that need it.
Sleep. Seriously. Sleep. This is one of these annoying illnesses where if you can sleep 16 hours a day, you actually feel okay for about 5 of the rest. That makes you think you can push yourself, and then you need even more sleep.
It’s a serious enough illness that it might be worth looking into using a couple of weeks of your FMLA time off, if there’s any way you can afford it. Use your sick days and your vacation days and your personal days first. That “serious illness” you were saving them for? This is it.
The good news is that after the first 2-4 weeks, you’ll no longer feel quite so tired. You should still take it easy, but you can go back to work (light-duty if you do hard manual labor) and resume most of your normal activities. I was always warned away from mowing the lawn in summer or shoveling snow in winter because of worries of splenic rupture, but your own doctor will be able to counsel you more accurately. Your spleen may or may not be swollen. It’s usually recommended to avoid contact sports for about 2 months after diagnosis.
If you’re open to herbal suggestions, I recommend lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), in tincture, tea or raw leaf form. The more, the better. It’s yummy and eaten as a salad green in many places. There is no known toxic amount or medical contraindications. It seems to have a great affinity for many herpes viruses, and I find I can arrest my own Epstein-Barr in the prodomal stage by using it. (Or make the symptoms so slight I don’t notice it, which amounts to the same thing for me!)
All you can do is sleep. I got it in High School, and not even the fun way, but from sharing a water glass. I missed about 4 weeks of school, and all I remember from it is watching Blue’s Clues with my sister the pre-schooler. The day of my blood test appointment, when I found out that I had it, it took me a sit-down-and-rest between every step to get ready. Walk to bathroom, rest. Shower, rest, walk back to bedroom, rest, dress, rest, walk to living room, rest, walk to car, etc. Good luck!
The other thing is to be sure you get enough liquids. At least that’s what the doctor told us when my daughter had mono. It gave her a really sore throat, so she didn’t feel like eating or drinking, and of course she slept a lot. The doctor said do anything necessary to keep her hydrated lest she wind up in the hospital on an i.v. Weird, nagging this youngster to *please * drink the soda or eat the popsicle.
Most important advice - “Listen to your body”. When it says “rest”, do it.
This comes from one of those “outlier cases” mentioned by Chief Pedant above. I had to withdraw from my first semester of college, spent 6 weeks on my back including 2 weeks in the hospital on IV.