# My son has mono **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 31, 2011, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-son-has-mono/594745 "2011-08-31T14:49:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![medstar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f07891/32.png) [@medstar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/medstar)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2011, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-son-has-mono/594745/41 "2011-09-04T23:19:38Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > I didn’t even get it by kissing. ☹ Maybe you were just too “mean” to get it by kissing?😃 ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2011, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-son-has-mono/594745/42 "2011-09-05T00:30:00Z")
I had it in high school, our best guess is that I got it from Marching Band. The land where no matter how careful you are, SOMEBODY accidentally got SOME disease in the water. Everybody in band was coming down with some degree of mono. Honestly, I felt tired and a little sick, but between my acid reflux and crippling depression at the time it felt relatively “less optimal than normal” so I went to school about as often as usual. One day I was playing Mario Galaxy and went from normalish to super sick feeling and super tired within a matter of an hour, was extremely fatigued, and was unable to eat or get out of bed for about a day. We thought it was just a nasty regular cold/flu-like bug. We had no idea I had mono, I was getting blood tests for some gastrointestinal problems, and the only reason we know the window I had it was because a month earlier it wasn’t found in the blood tests, and the month after the lab told us “oh, by the way, at some point in your life you’ve had mono.” To which we went “oooh, THAT’S what that was!” ---
**Author:** ![Blueberry\_Buckle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3bc359/32.png) [@Blueberry\_Buckle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blueberry_Buckle)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2011, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-son-has-mono/594745/43 "2011-09-05T05:10:18Z")
I had it as a teen, too. Nothing new to add to the discussion from my experience. However, my coworker’s son had it a few years ago. The one thing she did add (that no one above has mentioned) is that his testicles were extremely swollen and painful. ---
**Author:** ![shimmery](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@shimmery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shimmery)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-son-has-mono/594745/44 "2011-09-07T03:39:17Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > I must have had the lamest case of mono ever. Got it in college, it passed fairly quickly, and amounted to no more than an irritating throat ache. The doctor recommended I rest, skip class and not bicycle. She seemed surprised when I noted zero signs of fatigue. “You mean you haven’t been feverish and/or fatigued?” Not really. I biked to all my classes anyway and proceeded as normal. Ooh, no, _I_ had the lamest case ever! I only discovered that I’d had it from the result of a routine blood test sometime around the end of college. I slept all the damn time in college, so I just thought, well, I guess this explains _one_ of the times that I was kind of tired for a few weeks! Kind of mad that I missed the chance to milk it, though. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2011, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-son-has-mono/594745/45 "2011-09-07T05:22:04Z")
That’s about the age I got mono. I had to take a month off of school. The only real damage was to my budding relationships with classmates, as I was just getting used to a school change. I had to wait until the next year to start making friends. I still wonder to this day if it was because everyone always shared their drinks with me. But that also happened in ninth grade, so I’m not sure. And no one else seemed to get it around the same time. I do know it wasn’t from kissing: my first kiss was actually after that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-son-has-mono/594745.md?page=2)