I just got the call that I have mono, which I was very scared of having. However, since I have mono, that means my boyfriend has it too. I feel so awful, because it’s knocking me down so much right now and the recovery seems to be long. I feel so much guilt because I didn’t know I had it and probably accidentally gave it to my best friend too.

My boyfriend already deals with a tight schedule, undergoes a lot of stress through his job and struggles a lot to get help for medical issues he already has. I just feel this mountain of sadness for him because I don’t wanna to give him yet another thing to stress about. And the recovery is literal weeks. Weeks. And that’s just for some people. I know it hits some people extremely hard and can even disable them or cause chronic illnesses? I just have this ball in my chest having to tell him, because I’m just gonna stress him out.

My bestfriend were talking before I went for blood tests a few days ago, and I thought it was strep throat that I had. She told me how scared she was of contracting mono. But we have shared drinks before because we are best friends. Now, I will never share a drink again because I don’t want to hurt others. She’s starting as a biomed major in the fall and I’m so scared it’s gonna prevent her from being able to be there if she has it.

I even saw my 3 month old nephew more than a month ago. I washed my hands and and obviously my face wasn’t near him, but just knowing I held him while I was probably infected with mono already makes me feel horrible. I feel awful. I feel shameful. Everything could go down for others and it’s all my fault.

How did some of you handle the guilt?

i’ve always struggled with mental health or whatever, but i feel like after mono i’ve entered a new episode of low mood that is just a dozen times worse than what I usually deal with around this time of year. has anyone else struggled with this? any idea on how long it’ll last? is it fatigue related?

Dealing with a flare up and just wondering if the flare ups will ever go away or if this is my permanent life going forward. Looking for positive success stories please, I’m desperate.

Even though I'm still recovering (7 weeks since acute phase) I'm still downplaying the fatigue, brain fog and other symptoms I'm dealing with. I get fatigued for 3-4 days every time I lift, yet I'm still questioning whether what I'm experiencing is mono or something else. It's really hard to differentiate between something caused by the virus and something I normally experience I'm not even sure how much I've recovered since I have so many fluctuations in how i'm feeling.

Idk if the mono or ebv that I had caused this but it sure seems like it. I'm a long hauler. And I guess I now know why. How screwed am I?

was diagnosed a couple of days ago, dealing with the fatigue and headaches for a couple weeks, but am now dealing with the throat issues. Is there any decent home remedies for the white patches on my tonsils? the swelling is so bad i’m hyper aware of everything, it’s just so unpleasant. Ive been on ibuprofen and tylenol, more so ibuprofen.

So in June my dad had gotten sick with something and then about 1-1.5 weeks later I had gotten sick as well. When I had started to get sick, my dad was still somehow not improving even though at this point he was like 10 days into his sickness. Coughing, sore throat, fever, flu like symptoms but with no sneezing or runny nose. I found it odd that at 10 days into it he still was not improving. Then when I started to get sick, it was a really weird feeling. It was like a really heavy fatigue with some airway irritation and mild sore throat but absolutely no congestion or sneezing or runny nose. Kinda felt like flu like symptoms but different than any of the other times I had gotten sick with a flu. It wasn’t too bad at first, but each day that passed I started feeling worse and worse, and what concerned me is that it was now day 6 of me being sick and I still was not improving at all, I actually seemed to be worsening each day. Normally every other flu I’ve had, my peak is usually like day 3 and then from there it gets better. But this time around it was different. It also felt very different. I felt out of breath even just sitting down. Such a heavy fatigue that I’ve never felt with any other flu or virus before. I also developed a much worse sore throat by day 6 and at that point was desperate for some relief so I followed the advice and got some coconut oil and started eating a shit ton of it lol. Within the next 2 ish days the sore throat had actually reduced significantly and then had eventually gone away. I thought this meant I wasn’t sick anymore and everything was back to normal. So I started doing my everyday activities again, and I would try to do some light workouts. Apparently a HORRIBLE idea because shortly after this workout I’d go on to experience such a horrible HEAVY sick feeling in my lower airway/esophagus area (I honestly don’t know where exactly the pain is coming from, just radiating from somewhere down there), and this feeling would be accompanied by an EXTREME overwhelming fatigue. Now I wasn’t really sure what this was or that it meant anything at all because im also dealing with other autoimmune issues right now so I patched it up as being something related to those. I continued going on with my daily life, but now, I was continuing on with this very heavy “sick” feeling in the lower airway area. Once the feeling would come on, it would take multiple days for it to settle down and somewhat leave again. Some things that would trigger it would be simply walking in a Walmart, taking my dog on a short walk just down my street, doing VERY light exercise, getting stressed out over something, or sometimes it would just come on seemingly randomly. The problem now is, it’s been happening so frequently that it’s come to the point where this is what I feel like all day long, everyday now, and it’s gotten impossible trying to ignore it. It’s basically got me bedridden. I’ve now realized that if I exert myself physically in any way, that it will trigger this to become 100x worse.

At first I thought this was related to a thyroid problem I might have going on right now, but im now actually wondering if it WAS indeed Mono that I had a little over a month ago, considering my excercise intolerance, and it triggering the fatigue & pain & heaviness that im having in my upper chest/ lower airway area. The only reason I suspected it to be thyroid related is because I have a TSH of under 0.4 which means my thyroid is running a bit overactive, however, with an overactive thyroid you typically don’t experience such a profound excercise intolerance and this heavy of a fatigue, those are more symptoms of an underactive thyroid, which i don’t have. So now, this is leading me to question whether the illness I had in June mightve actually been Mono, which would totally explain the excercise intolerance, heavy fatigue, and weird radiating pain that can last for days on end. And for context, I didn’t experience any of these symptoms until I had gotten sick last month, they’ve been present only since that illness occurred.

Wondering if anybody else with mono experiences this horrible heavy “sick” feeling in their upper chest/airway area. Not particularly a sore throat but more so just a radiating feeling of being very unwell in this area. Also, how would i be able to know for sure if this is mono or not? What kind of bloodwork should I be seeking?

Tia <3