<p>LOL hopkins. At the last sentence only, of course.</p>
<p>Well, just to let you know that not ALL mono is so bad, my DD got it on a trip to Brazil one summer between junior and senior year in HS. Got off the plane and got very ill with what was probably food poisoning, but took her in for all tests due to the possibility of malaria. She had mono also, but it was fairly mild and she was back to full health after only a week or so. I hope your son's is equally mild!</p>
<p>When I had mono, I had it at the same time as the flu... Not a good combo...</p>
<p>hopkins Please do not malign university health services that way. Many of us are very well trained and choose to work there for the flexibilty of the hours etc For your information sinusitis is not diagnosed by looking up your nose. The only definitive diagnosis is by Cat scan or Xray. Dark yellow stuff from your nose is not necessarily sinusitis. The trend in well educated physicians is away from calling every stuffy nose with yellow green drainage sinusitis. If every doc had not prescribed antibiotics for every stuffy nose we would not be in the awful state of resistant organisms and super bugs that we are now. my suggestion if you want to deal well with health care systems is not to belittle them and not to demand antibiotics but rather to present your cocncerns and your past history such as if you really have had a lot of sinus infections etc mention the CAT scan that you had that showed chronic changes or your evalaution by and ENT doc that showed chronic problems etc and if even then you are not satisfied ask nicely for a second opinion. Most of us are more than willin to listen but if we are to stop the developement of worse super bugs we have to save antibiotics for when they are truly necessary.</p>
<p>Excellent post, josiemax, and very true.</p>
<p>I am sorry, but that is exactly what I did. (And if you do look up the nose and the sinuses are extremely inflamed, that is sinusitis. I think you are mistaking chronic sinusitis by taking a CAT scan (of which I have had))
I know exactly what happens when I personally get a sinus infection. I've been to an ENT before and he did say I get chronic sinus infections. I have experienced what happens if I just leave it alone and in my personal case I get pretty sick. I go to the doctor probably 5 times a year because of them and they are always sinus infections. One time I tried to wait it out and I developed a fever and instead of being able to attend school, I was stuck in bed for a few days.
I was not saying all health services are bad, I was just detailing my bad account with my school's (of which there are tons of kids to back me up). Sorry</p>
<p>Josiemax, I wish you were where my daughter is at college; we had a horrible experience with mono and the student health services. Last mid-April (second semester freshman year) she got very sick - couldn't swallow her own spit, throwing up, fever, exhaustion. She also knew some of the girls in her sorority pledge class had tested positive for mono, so she went to the health center. She told them about the mono exposure, but they wouldn't test her. They didn't even do an examination of her abdomen (to check her spleen). They tested her for strep, though, and put her on antibiotics before getting the results (they don't do quick strep tests, and eventually that test came back negative). She would call home crying to me during the night (she's 700 miles away), I would call the health center, they would call her back, and this happened several times, but they told her she probably just had something "viral" (yea, isn't that what mono is???). Of course over a couple of weeks she started to feel better, right about the time that finals kicked in and the ensuing stress of packing up to come home for the summer. Within 8 hours of arriving home for summer, she physically fell apart again. She went to our doctor the next day, who did the blood test and confirmed the mono. I was furious - what if during that week or two period when she was feeling better, she had engaged in some recreational sport? She would have been at a huge risk for spleen injury. She eventually started to get better (was sicker the second time around), but each time we scheduled an appt. for follow up liver enzymes, she'd get sick again - two sinus infections, so they kept delaying the blood work. It wasn't until early August that we finally got good results back that her liver was functioning OK. In the meantime, she wasn't able to work over the summer. I wrote the medical director of the health center, but never heard back from anyone. I just can't believe that given her known exposure, classic symptoms and request from me, they wouldn't test her. So far this term, she's been healthy, but if she gets sick again, I just don't have any confidence in her going back there... yet I'm 700 miles away. It was a heartbreaking experience for me (but made her appreciate me much more when she relapsed at home). The lesson I learned??? I should have pushed harded, and when I didn't get results, somehow I should have found someone who could refer us to a physician off campus, and sent her there. So parents, be an advocate for your student, but also be prepared that the medical professionals will need your student's permission before they will talk to you. If it's mono, even when they're feeling better, they need to take it easy so their immune system can catch back up.</p>
<p>When I got mono it was really awful. I have never been that sick in my life. I was delirious with fever for 5 days. My throat hurt too much to eat anything that wasn't soft for two weeks. Nevertheless, I managed to care for myself for the three weeks I had "acute symptoms" and I didn't fail out of the semester. It's your call, really, about what you want to do. For most kids mono is not as bad as it was for me. Tell your child to get lots of sleep (and not to let a significant other keep them up late;) and they will get well faster.</p>
<p>teriwtt. That does not sound good at all. We address every concern raised by a parent or student. If I had been in your position I would have been very upset. I know within our university the student health service reports to the division of student affairs. If someone is not happy with us they can address their conerns at a higher level. You might want to find out who else within the university you could address your concerns to. It is true that health professionals are not allowed to discuss specifics fo your students care without their permission. Thats a federal law covered under HIPPA.</p>
<p>Mono can vary a lot. I had it in college, and except for the really sore throat at the beginning, I didn't feel that different. I did try to get extra rest and used it as an excuse to go home and sprawl on mom's couch a couple weekends. . . I turned down rides from campus security--I had to walk pretty far to classes, but it didn't really bother me. I avoided drinking (did not celebrate my 21st b-day!) as I was told. Overall, mono didn't affect my attendance, work, or grades at all.
Let's hope if your kid gets it, it's a mild case.</p>
<p>My kid has mono this semester, but after the sore throat (which he described as the worst in his life) the symptoms have been relatively mild. However, after he started feeling better, he complained that he got a cough -- but only while lying down -- that makes it difficult to sleep, even with cough syrup. Any ideas if this is related to the mono?</p>
<p>We have not succeeded in getting him to contact an advisor, professors, go back to the health center for follow up, cut back on any activies, or to stop lifting weights. I did e-mail him the comments on this thread about drinking, in hopes they would be noted, and just maybe heeded.</p>
<p>sac, his cough is most likely due to post-nasal drip. It goes down his trachea when he is supine, thus he coughs. Cough medicines are not as effective as antihistamine/decongestant combinations for this. So he should try some over-the-counter cold medicine before bedtime to get rid of the cough and get some sleep.</p>
<p>thanks for the response.. I think he has been taking something like NyQuil with cough suppressant, so I assume that's also a decongestant. He swears he's not stuffed up, and that his chest is not tight. (mildly asthmatic). I was wondering if there was some known cough-related complication from mono, so I could prod him about getting to the health center again.</p>
<p>well, he will do what he will do. finals this week, then home where I can force feed him and will attempt to tie him to the bed. (ha)</p>
<p>Last year at the public high school in our community there was a huge out break of mono. I had mono my freshman year in college and it's no fun. I would most certainly let him come home. I spent my time in either my dorm room or the health center and that was awful.</p>
<p>sac - just commiserating here. Amazing how our DDS's will <em>not</em> "contact an advisor, professors, go back to the health center for followup" but instead will "do what he will do." This is the exact experience with my S, about whom the origin of this thread.</p>
<p>He did make it through finals, is home now, <em>appears</em> not to have had mono or strep, but a cold and a false alarm. He still has a nagging cough. I plan to usher him to his physician in the 4 weeks he is home. But who knows what will happen to this "best laid plan."</p>
<p>Hope your S makes it through finals ok. And hoping mine did as well as he expected in his own finals, as he certainly didn't give himself any chance for special accommodation by not contacting profs in advance; and now, with the imminent need to transfer due to changes at Tulane, the grades will <em>matter.</em></p>
<p>I'm at college in England. Here "Mono" is known as "glandular fever" and is considered no big deal. You certainly wouldn't get sent home for having, nor get much time off. It's considered an everyday condition and no sympathy is really forthcoming. Students just get told not to kiss anyone and are sent back to class usually. I wonder if it is a lot more common here?</p>
<p>jmmom -- Thanks for the commiseration. The kid called yesterday and seems to have summoned the energy to give two concerts, go to two formal dances, and take on bartending gigs, all in the run up to finals, so my official sympathy tap is now turned off.</p>
<p>cupcake -- I think most cases are, in fact, minor. (Though my brother had such a high fever with mono his first semester in law school that he was hospitalized.) It may also be, if I'm remembering my year at a university in England and things are still the same, that exams and individual course grades are not as important there because you have a cumulative exam at the end that determines your degree. So it might be that it's not a big deal to have one semester if you're not up to par, unless it's the last one. Do you think that might be it?</p>
<p>Sac:</p>
<p>Some of us, who do not have mono, could not summom that much energy, LOL!</p>
<p>marite: He didn't get that energy level from me! I think I was born with mono...</p>
<p>DD is back home with mono - fevers of 103+ on and off, sleeping 18 hours a day. (She's had it a little over a week. The health center diagnosed it as tonsilitis, but did a mono-test the second time she went in.) My husband drove up to her school and picked her up because she was feeling like she needed some time to really sleep. (I posted about her previous case of mono earlier. She was diagnosed with mono several years ago - and had a really minor case. I'm wondering if that diagnosis was correct - because I understand it is very rare to have it twice.) What a lousy time to have mono!!!! I'm wondering if I should encourage her to stay home for a few more days--- but there are only 5 more days of classes, and then there are finals... Hmm... People, chime in with more mono stories so that I can get a sense of what I should encourage her to do!</p>