After the body aches, I got headaches every day. I lived off of Advil for a week or two because they hurt so bad. I swear my roommates thought I was a druggie because day after day I would resort to the bathroom closet to pop some more pills. Eventually the headaches started to stop.
I had taken Advil every day for like 2 weeks. I never felt motivated to go out and play volleyball with strangers or make new friends. All I wanted to do was stay inside and lay on my memory-foam bed, or run home to my parents to let them baby me.
After the first week of school, a sore throat started to develop. Usually I would get a minor sore throat before a cold really started to hit, but I had no other signs of having the cold or the flu. But the sore throat just simply wouldn't go away. I started to question strep.
Over Labor Day weekend, I went home and told my parents that I needed to make a doctors appointment. Now, my family never goes to the doctor.... We all have a really high tolerance to pain and are all usually as healthy as a horse. So when one of us feels bad enough to actually go to the doctor, we know something must seriously be wrong.
The doctor had a look down my throat and was horrified at how swollen and bad it looked. I won't give details. They took a swab for strep, but the test results would take longer to get back because of the holiday. So he put me on a prescription that should have helped.
3 days later, still sticking true the prescription, I felt that it was actually getting worse. After the weekend, I went back to my cute little apartment back in Logan and made an appointment with the Health and Wellness Center.
This doctor took a look down my throat and instantly came back with the conclusion of mono. He sent me in to have a blood test just to be sure.
I hadn't had a needle stuck in my arm in years... Last time I went to go get my blood drawn 2 years ago, my pulse was too high and they wouldn't let me do it. So I looked away and closed my eyes as the little needle pinched into my skin.
The lady drawing my blood was super nice though. We had a nice chat about her cute nails and a blanket that she had made for her grand baby. She told me stories of when her boyfriend had given her mono back in her high school days. After the blood was drawn, she got to wrap it up in the pretty tape. She asked me if I wanted green tape with orange dinosaurs, or pink tape with purple hearts. I told her that I wanted the pink one, but I kind of regret not choosing the dinosaurs now..
She sent me out in the hall while the blood was being tested, and told me that it would take about 10 minutes to receive results. That's a lot better than the 4 days from my other doctor back home...
Sitting next to me was a nice man and his 2 kids. He was there because I thought he had broken his ankle playing volleyball. What a rough sport. We had a nice little chat as well.
5 minutes later, the nurse said that it had already appeared positive.
You're kidding me..
I'm positive for mono?!
Only sluts get mono! And me? I hadn't kissed a boy in almost a month! Little innocent me...
I instantly felt embarrassed. I left the wellness center with the little "So, You've Got Mono" pamphlet that they gave me that looked like it was made in the 70's.
When I got back to the apartment I read all through the pamphlet and researched mono on the internet. It says that the early symptoms are muscle aches, head aches and fever. Well there you go.... That explains why I haven't felt good at all since moving. It wasn't ALL stress at least.. I've just had this awful disease in my system for weeks and weeks.
All throughout the rest of the day I felt like there was a sign above my head that had MONO written in big red letters. I would walk past a strangers on campus and they would give me the typical "Hey!" (People in Logan are so friendly) I would squeak back with a really low "Hey". I sound like a grown man going through puberty. Plus it hurts to talk! So for the rest of the day I didn't talk to many people except for my roommates. Which also sucked because in my Interior Design class, we were having a really good discussion, but I was too embarrassed of my voice to speak up. How sad...
So here I am. An Aggie with mono. Never in my life would I have ever thought I would be THAT girl. Guess I won't be a True Aggie for quite a while longer...
And there isn't anything that doctors can do about it. No medications. I'm just tired alllll the time and my throat feels like it's going to burst and turn itself inside out. It'll take about a month for me to get back to "normal". Until then, i'm dropping my conditioning class (how sad..) and taking as many naps as possible.. Classes are super hard to stay focused.
Stupid mono...
It's actually really embarrassing to tell people, so i'd appreciate it if all you readers (IF there even are readers...) kept in on the DL (DL meaning Down Low, not Dance Line ;) Although there were a few girls on my team that did get it in high school). Mono seems to give it's victims a bad reputation. And after all of the pain that it causes to a person physically, they shouldn't need to go through the pain of a bad reputation either.
Especially from a girl starting out in a brand new college with all new people...
I promise i'm no slut. I'm almost as innocent as girls get in that category.
Oh well.
College. It's quite the adventure.
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