My experience of mono (18 months after diagnosis)

Hi all, I'm writing in this forum to give anyone who is interested an overview of my story with glandular fever. When i was sick I felt like there weren't enough places to get other peoples stories so hopefully this will help anyone.

Around Feb 2018 (age 22) I came down with a bad case of 'flu', it wasn't the worst sickness i'd ever had, but it did have some noticeable differences to other cases of flu i had experienced in my life. Firstly, i was sweating like crazy, literally walking up the stairs would make me sweat and leave me tired. Also i had serious muscle aches, with my neck feeling very stiff. It was feeling and trying to massage my neck for some relief from the aching that i first felt a little lump on the side of my neck. After about a week of being sick and not getting much better, I went to see my doctor. They did some blood tests, and after a raised White blood cell count, ordered a test to check for GF, with came back positive.

Over the next week, the main symptoms began to subside. The real 'flu' feeling of chills and sweating, and some of the aching began to pass, and i began to feel better. Hopeful that i was going to get over this illness nice and quick.

But then, after a week of getting better almost to the point of feeling fine again, i woke up one morning, and the aching was back, my entire upper arms ached and felt heavy, my shoulders hurt, and my neck was as painful as ever. I also began to develop a pain in my right hand, and in my wrists. Everything just felt achy.

I made a doctors appointment again to tell them about these changes and another blood test was taken. The results of this test were normal, all my blood levels had returned to normal and i was no longer 'actively sick'

The doctors told me that i was experiencing 'Post Viral Fatigue'. This is something that you can get after being sick, and often occurs after GF. The doctors said it might take months to get over. Looking online after this i fell into the forums of people talking about how the never got over GF and how they went on to develop Chronic Fatigue syndrome ( an often lifelong and incurable illness). Seeing this raised my anxiety levels through the roof. My body was aching, my neck hurt and i became convinced i was never going to get better.

As the months rolled on nothing seemed to get better. I made a number of trips back to the doctor, becoming convinced that the lump on my neck was actually lymphoma or something more serious, because I couldn't understand how my body could remain so achey and sore for such a long time after being sick.

By this point I was about 6 months into my adventures with GF. Having almost given up hope that i was ever going to get back to how I was before, I went to see my doctor one last time. He recommended that i tried to relax, he assured me that often and especially in older people, GF can linger for a long time after someone gets sick. He also recommended that i tried to do some LIGHT exercise, not only because he felt it would be good for my energy levels, but also because exercising has been proven to reduce levels of anxiety and raise your mood.

Whether it was these changes that i implemented or just the passing of time i don't know, but over the next couple of months i started to feel a little better. My symptoms would almost go away for a period of time, maybe a day, and then come back for a week, and then 2 days, and the come back for a week. And gradually, these periods where i wasn't really noticing the aching and the everything else got longer, and the periods of time when my symptoms got worse again got shorter. By christmas that year, I seemed to just experience the odd flare up, where i would get muscle aches in my neck, and down my arm, and weirdly in my hand around my thumb would ache.

Even now, a year and a half on, I do very occasionally experience little bouts of muscle ache. in my neck around the site of the gland i felt (which never went down, so if yours don't, try not to stress), and in my hand, but they usually don't last too long, maybe a day or so, and a little bit of tiger balm and some ibuprofen and a distraction for my mind usually help me forget about it pretty quickly.

Anyway the point is, there are a lot of stories on the internet of people never getting better, and i'm not for one iota of a second suggesting that people sometimes sadly don't get better, but much like bad reviews for a restaurant, if you're not getting better you're more likely to write a post on a forum than the person did get better.

I do think that a big part of me getting better was just trying to have a more positive outlook on everything, trusting my doctor that I was going to get better, and just trying to get on with my life as best as I could.

If you have any questions about my story, or if you want to ask me anything about your own, or anything else that i haven't covered in the post then i'll be happy to try and help you.

Thanks

Lewis

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