Mono recovery story collection!!

Hi everyone, decided to share my story I consider kind of positive.

So, I got my first symptoms in the beginning of February 2021. I had mild fever and stuffy nose, so I was sure I just caught a cold. I even got better in about 12 days, but then suddenly felt very bad (supposedly after I visited a doctor and happily walked back home being sure I was almost fully recovered). Since that I had pretty severe fatigue (especially the following several days since that crash), shortness of breath, lost of appetite, and enlarged neck nodes and weird feelings inside my head, especially around ears and temples which all made me freaked out. I lost weight cuz I couldn't eat well and I got very, very anxious and scared to death. Here I should say that anxiety and depression were the worst part of my mono experience, it was really tough (many of us will understand for sure, but I want to emphasize that I find it super important for sufferers to recognize this aspect and try to help themselves to calm down as possible and not fuel the situation with extra stress). I was frightened by my condition, I cried a lot, sometimes for a week in a row, got many breakdowns. Had nightmares every night, and every day was like a torture, because I was so scared and paranoid so I couldn't stay alone at all. And I couldn't do any kind of chores and couldn't work at all. (Now I understand that probably I would feel much better if I had enough information about the disease and how it goes, but I just didn't know it could be like this and I was sure something really bad is going on with me and I even don't know what exactly).

Symptoms came and gone, I had bad days and then I started having good days. Mostly I could walk near my home and have some guests and talks, but there was not a single day that I felt healthy. And often I was afraid I could stay in this condition forever.

Long story short, I felt some notable improvements in about 4 months. I could work a bit (I'm a freelancer), somehow for 2-3 hours through the day. For the first time I had some days I felt normal and didn't feel anything unusual, even though some symptoms came back from time to time (mostly weird "warm" tension in my head in the middle of the day, and swollen neck nodes sometimes). But anyway, I have been able to live my normal life at 60-80% even on bad days.

Now I'm at my 6th month, and I still feel some issues sometimes and have rare "bad" days. But I can work, I can walk long distances (wow, I can go to a neighboring city on some business and successfully come back the same day) and so on. I'm not frightened anymore, I don't cry, I can make plans for the future and sleep well.

And for a conclusion I want to share the most useful things that helped me: support from my friends and family (including money issue in order i wasn't able to work for so long. And what about support, they didn't really understood what I was going through and how to help me, but they tried their best and It did help a lot), tranquillizer from my therapist (so big thanks for that prescription. And btw I was diagnosed with PTSD, and it also helped me to understand what's going on with me), and CBT techniques in combating against anxiety and fear. But the most important thing is managing energy wasting and getting enough adequate rest in order to prevent post-exertional crashes.

So, I hope you guys who is suffering will be better as soon as possible, and you should know - we know what you feel, we know how tough it is. But it won't be so bad forever.