You’re exhausted and you don’t know why.  You can’t get out of bed, but you didn’t feel sick a couple days ago.  You take your temperature and realize you’re running a fever.  Soon, you’re getting headaches and your muscles ache even though you haven’t gotten out of bed all day.  Your throat is sore, you don’t want to eat anything, and you were fine yesterday!

While this is a great excuse to get out of school, the fun you get from mononucleosis ends there.  Mono symptoms can appear at any time, regardless of how you felt the day before.  Not only can it surprise you, but it’ll leave you in bed feeling like crap for weeks.

The other annoying part of mono is that it is contagious, so you might want to tell your friends to only visit sparingly.  You don’t want to pass this on to anyone else, no matter how mad you are at them.  You’re probably not going to feel up to a visit anyway.  All you’re going to want to do is lie in bed and watch as many movies as you can stand for weeks.

The good news, though, is that mono will go away on its own, and is NOT threatening at all.  It’s more annoying than anything else.  (The other bad news is that kissing isn’t the only way you can get it, so you could get mono without the fun of kissing someone—that sucks!)  There’s no cure for it; the only treatment is plenty of rest and fluids.  But it will go away on its own within a few weeks, and you’ll be back on your feet, and back in school.  Who knows, by the time you’re feeling better you may be so sick of your house that you actually want to go back to school!  (We’ll see about that one...)