Mono and me

Last week I missed most of my classes because I couldn’t find the energy required to put on shoes. Also, I was talking like I had a baseball lodged in my throat.

By the time I made it to the health center, I felt as weak and defenseless as a needy young child and was behaving accordingly.

“Is it going to hurt?” I whined, pulling my arm away from the nurse who was about to take my blood.

“Just a little, honey,” she said soothingly, “but I know you’ll be brave.”

At my request, she let me lie down on a cot while she took my blood. As it was happening, she talked about yummy Thanksgiving foods to distract me.

“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked when it was over.

“I guess not,” I said smiling, feeling proud.

“Would you like anything to drink while you wait for your results, honey?” she asked.

“Apple juice would be nice,” I cooed. “With a straw.”

Twenty minutes later my doctor returned with the good news.

“The good news is that you don’t have strep on top of your mono!” she said.

“Mono?” I croaked. “I don’t have time for mono!” I wanted to say something about classes and applying for graduate schools, but it wasn’t worth the effort of talking and the pain of swallowing my saliva afterward. I attempted to cry but got so exhausted trying to summon tears that I forgot where I was and almost fell asleep.

“Don’t do anything even remotely physical for the next month,” she instructed. (Had she not noticed me struggling for 20 minutes to get up from a cot after a routine blood test?) “And if anyone hits you in the abdomen, call the ambulance.”

Then she prescribed some pills that would make my throat feel like a human body part again. She told me that these pills make some people feel really euphoric and others really depressed. I figured I had nowhere to go but up, so I went home, heated up some mac and cheese, took my pill and prepared to slip into a state of pure ecstasy.  

Ten minutes later I was curled under my covers in the fetal position, weeping on the phone to my best friend and howling between sobs, “I don’t even want to live! If this is life, then I don’t even want to live it!”

On the bright side, my depression pills restored to me the gift of speech. The next morning I reasoned that if I could talk, I could go to class. But after the bus ride into campus, I felt so exhausted from watching so many things out the window that I decided to just go straight back home and spend the next two weeks napping off the bus ride.

But considering how easy it is to fall asleep on the bus and in the shower, I’m always so surprised by how difficult it is to fall asleep at night. This is the paradox that mono has caused my life to become.