mono
 

so i guess this is going to be a bit of a simple question.
but its something thats been eating away at me for a little while now.


what is this term: mono


here it is being used in context. a la Bret Easton Ellis (Rules of Attraction)...
thanks...

Mononucleosis is a fun disease that gives you what's essentially a week-long nightmare fever. (It can last for months.) It's sometimes referred to as The Kissing Disease because it's primarily spread through oral contact. I'm not sure about this, but I think I've heard you can only get it once, like chicken pox.

I remember back in high school there was a small epidemic of mono. Kids would leave school for weeks at a time over the winter and return, somewhat more haggard and way the hell behind, in the spring.

Yep.

A friend of mine got this disease and it wasn't all that great for him. He said he barely had any energy at all, so he was bedridden for basically the whole time he was sick (a few weeks).

great.
thanks Sledge.

i´ve never heard of that before. i had a feeling that it was a disease (std) since Ellis refers to it that way, but i couldn´t be sure.

i also figured it could possibly be a term for some sort of sexual favour.
i guess it could be described as a favour, but sounds like more of a nasty favour, than a good one.

is it as serious as Glandular Fever? or is it related?
Glandular Fever is referred to as the Kissing Disease over here.

Google: mono virus
http://www.allsands.com/Health/Disea...vir_btf_gn.htm

It seems to have very similar symptoms to what ukasians call glandular fever...

Cripes, I hated that. was coming down with it for months, it hit for about 6 weeks - including a week in hospital - and sucked the life out of me for years afterwards.

I've been told from lots and lots of people that it's a precursor for M.E. - yuppy flu...

Aha.

http://www.amm.co.uk/pubs/fa_glanfever.htm

Same thing.

You can only get it once. It is spread through kissing, although it can also be spread by sharing a drink, sneezing, or coughing. Mono can be dangerous because it can cause the spleen to enlarge, and if someone is hit in the back during this time, the spleen may rupture causing the person to be on antibiotics for the rest of their life. There are some people who have had mono and never knew about it, which means they already have antibodies to fight it off, so they won't come down with a more severe case of it later.

Long story short. 2 years ago my friend got it from drinking after his brother. I got it through drinking after my friend. And before you know it 30+ people had it. And you CAN get it more than once. One of my friends has had it twice. 1st time worse than the 2nd. Mine was pretty light with the exception of one week where I missed like 4 days of school and slept a lot in class. All of my teachers were pretty understanding and would let me sleep in class. It was nice to float by part of my senior year and all you had to say was you had mono. Basically, in bad cases you have a really bad sore throat, and don't have enough energy to go to the bathroom. They can prescribe medicine, but it didn't help me out.

edit: Forgot to proofread....

well, with Glandular Fever, i know that you can have relapses, even though you get it once.
and if appropriate remedies aren't administered (ie, medicine and rest) you can lapse into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

last time i was in America, an ex-girlfriend got it bad just after i came home (she travelled on to chicago). the people she stayed with in chicago were christian scientists (i think) and they refused to take her to the hospital, despite her being very ill.
in the end her father had to fly out from Sydney, to get her to proper medical care.

but the weird thing was, that when i got home, i also got Glandular, but my case was really very mild, i think i only missed like a week of school.

I got it off a soda can from a friend, my sophomore year of college. lurkette, with whom I was frequently and enthusiastically making out at the time, never came down with it.....

It was MISERABLE--I could drag myself awake at about 1:00pm, long enough to stumble to the cafeteria. When I got there I was absolutely starving (literally!) but about two bites into my meal I couldn't eat any more. Then stumble back to my dorm by about 3:00 pm, collapse into bed, and sleep until 1:00 the next afternoon. I understand at one point a party happened around me in our dorm room, which I slept through.

This lasted for about two weeks, sandwiched between about two more weeks of similar but milder symptoms.

i got mono back in high school, but i was saved by two things. firstly, my immune system is somewhere between impenetrable and superman... i only feel sick if it's a major rout of whatever. secondly, i was living at my grandparents at the time, so when i was sick enough to call out from school (most of the time i really wasn't, but i feigned it well enough to get a day off), i was cared for. i got three squares a day and my gramma demanded i go to bed early, so the mono was dealt with in a pretty short time.

because it's a virus, it's with you for the rest of your life, but normally after the initial infection your body has smacked it down hard enough that it never comes back. it just makes you all kinds of tired, your throat is sore, and the lymph nodes in your neck swell up (it's where the virus lives). it's not a fun thing to have... especially when you're young and have so many girls you wanna kiss.