Pass the Nyquil...

Feeling a bit under the weather today – I seem to have developed a slight cold (which is usually about as bad as my colds get, fortunately…). I think I must’ve caught it from dad, who was here last week fixing a drawer in my bathroom and mentioned he had a cold. I didn’t think much of it until I started feeling rather coldy myself, and then realized I’ve been using that bathroom drawer all week – which is no doubt crawling with virusy cold germs. So thanks a LOT, dad… (no seriously – thanks for fixing the drawer… it was about to fall out onto the floor…) :)

I seem to have been blessed with an extremely hard-working immune system, for which I’ve always been grateful. I can go for years without catching a cold, and when I DO catch one, it always throws me off guard (where did THIS come from???). So I was especially surprised when, shortly after my twentieth birthday, I started developing an annoying progression of symptoms. First I was simply feeling very tired. And it wasn’t normal, “I haven’t had enough sleep” tired – it was like, “more-tired-than-I’ve-ever-been-in-my-life” tired. I’d sleep for twelve hours straight and STILL feel like I needed a nap during the day. And then, was it my imagination, or were there a bunch of weird bumpy things in my neck? Swollen glands? Those two symptoms alone were enough to send me to the medical dictionary (argh! Is it Hodgkin’s disease??). But I decided to wait it out and see what happened…

What happened is that I soon developed a fever, which I discovered I could manage if I took some Tylenol in the morning. As long as I popped a couple Tylenol when I woke up (feeling feverish and tired), the fever would subside and I’d feel better. Not great. Just better. But by evening, the fever would always return. After a few days, I noticed a couple other weird symptoms – I had an unquenchable thirst for soda (water or juice just didn’t sound good… for some reason, the carbonation in soda felt good…), and I would drink an entire can of soda for breakfast. I hardly ever drink soda – and when I do, I barely drink more than a third of a can at a time. And certainly not for breakfast. And while my stomach wasn’t upset and I could eat without feeling nauseous, I’d feel completely full after just a few bites. In fact, if I ate just a little bit, I’d feel an achy sort of pain under my ribs and lose my appetite.

And then, almost overnight (or perhaps it WAS overnight) I developed the worst sore throat I’ve ever had in my life. At that point, it didn’t matter if I was nauseous or not – eating was pretty much out of the question. And that’s when I figured it out – strep throat! I figured it must’ve been strep throat – all my life, I’d been hearing about friends who came down with nasty cases of strep throat and needed antibiotics. But me and my hard-working immune system had never encountered the malady. So that settled it – I’d simply go to the doctor, he’d give me antibiotics, and I’d be feeling better in a few days.

By this time, I was really so sick that driving myself was out of the question. My mom took me to the doctor while I rode in the passenger seat in a semi-conscious state. I remember they took a throat culture to test for strep, and I languished in a chair while we waited for the results. The results, to my surprise, were negative. But the doctor DID inform of us of his assumed diagnosis – mononucleosis. To confirm, the nurse took four little vials of blood, after which my mom and I went out to pay the bill and I noticed the entire room was blacking out. As my vision began to tunnel, I managed to say, “I think I’m going to pass out,” and nurses swooped in from who-knows-where (I really don’t know where – I couldn’t see anything) and deposited me in chair. After putting my head down and drinking some water, I felt well enough to return to my semi-conscious car passenger position.

There are no antibiotics for mono, of course – it’s just one of those things that has to “run its course.” And it got worse before it got better. Those swollen glands in my neck expanded to unbelievable proportions – I looked like I’d tried to swallow some sort of citrus fruit centerpiece. And I learned that human beings have lymph nodes in some very strange places. Like the bony area behind the ear – I had bumps sprouting up like giant mosquito bites. The achy feeling near my stomach turned to outright pain, and I was informed that this was because my spleen and liver were enlarged. This resulted in several minutes of repositioning every time I settled on the couch or in bed, as it was difficult to find a way to rest comfortably.

But after a few weeks, the sore throat subsided and my fever finally broke. Eventually the swollen glands receded (although I can STILL to this day feel slightly swollen glands on the left side of my neck – the swelling was especially bad on that side), and I no longer had a bizarre desire for breakfast soda. The achy spleen/liver and fatigue lingered for a couple months, but it was nothing I wasn’t able to handle. Once I’d recovered, I started wondering how, exactly, I’d contracted this illness. Mono is commonly known as the “kissing disease,” but I’d come down with it shortly after I started dating Rick – and Rick wasn’t sick at all. So I did some research, and discovered some interesting facts about mono. Most people actually contract the virus as children, but at that age, the symptoms are much milder – if a child has mono, it probably looks like a simple case of the flu. Kids get sick all the time, so flu-like symptoms that eventually resolve and disappear wouldn’t seem at all unusual. However, as with many other viruses, once someone has contracted this virus, it’s possible at various times for the virus to “activate” without making the carrier ill. And when that happens, it’s also possible for the virus to be passed along to other people – even when the carrier exhibits no symptoms.

That made everything perfectly clear to me – obviously Rick was one of the majority of the population who contracted mono as a child. Whereas I, for some reason, never did. When we started dating, that virus happened to be in an “active” phase, and he passed it right along to me. To me it seems so obvious that this is exactly what happened, but Rick has vehemently denied these allegations throughout the years. Which would mean, of course, that I’d been kissing someone ELSE at the time. Personally, I don’t see how that’s better. But if Rick refuses to take responsibility for sickening me so horribly, I’d at least like to make it a good story.

So I think my next post will be titled, “How I caught mono from Derek Jeter.” :)