Mono?

Warning, this post is purely selfish and full of whining. I’m sick and it sucks, and I needed an outlet.

I’ve been feeling incredibly sick and awful for the past 2 weeks. Sore throat, cough, fever, complete and utter fatigue, whole body hurting as if I’d just done an intense 4-hour full-body workout. I thought it was the flu, and I’d be over it pretty quickly. 6 days after I got it, I ended up in the doctors office, because I was feeling so awful and in a lot of pain and wanted some answers. They said it was probably the flu, rest and if I still felt bad in a week to come back. Well it will have been a week on Monday, and I’m very likely going back. For anyone w ho knows me, you’ll know that I *hate* going to the doctor. I never communicate well and sometimes shut down – it’s an incredibly stressful situation, and if I can self-treat at home without going in, I will. I usually only end up at the doctors office when I have run out of spoons so completely that I can’t function – when I stop being able to use the limb in question, or when I have been feeling really sick and not getting better, sometimes getting worse, for weeks on end. I know it’s not a good way to do things, but that’s how it is. Going to the doctor is just such an awful, stressful situation that I will only attempt it if there are no other options.

I’ve never had mono, but that’s what they think this is. My lymph nodes are swollen almost painfully, it hurts to move my body, and I’m beyond exhausted. My throat hurts, my tonsils are big, and I’m running a fever. And worst of all my brain isn’t working very well. And it SUCKS. I get to find out on Monday when I let them poke me with needles and prod me and see if they can figure out what’s wrong. I hope it’s mono, and not something worse. Because something is definitely wrong. Mono, at least, runs its course on its own.

I’m a graduate student. Full-time. I don’t have time for this. I’ve spent the past couple weeks just trying to keep up. Every time I start feeling a little bit better and I do a little more work or push a little more than I should, and I spend the next 3 days feeling colossally worse. If this was the flu, it wouldn’t be doing this. I’m behind already and it’s only a few weeks in. I have a travel grant due on Wednesday and a major class presentation on Thursday. And I need to do those things. I’m really excited about both of these things. I want to do them. And I have to do them. There’s not really any other options.

And yes, I know, I should have spent the 30 minutes I took to type this, working on something productive, but I didn’t. Instead I wrote a post about how crappy I’m feeling. I don’t feel any better at the end of it, but oh well. At least you now know why there haven’t been any quality posts recently. I promise just as soon as I’m feeling better and have pulled myself out of this hole, that I have several posts backlogged that will appear. They’re not finished yet and my brain’s not working in a capacity where I can finish them now and have them turn out to be any good, but hopefully soon.

 

p.s. comments make me happy. If anyone has had mono and wants to share their experience with it, I’d be interested to know what I might be in for here. Or if anyone has any tips for surviving doctors appointments, that’d be nice too. I haven’t mastered those yet.