At Aaron’s encouragement, I’m adding to this thread. Seeing as I was diagnosed by the less-than-renowned university health center, by a PA who’s probably three years older than I am, if that, he figured there was a decent chance of finding a more qualified expert on here.
I still hold that turning to the interwebs for medical advice is questionable, but sometimes, you’ll take any idea better than your own, I guess.
Symptoms:
-two days of nausea and vomiting. The latter has pretty much stopped, but only because I haven’t eaten enough to have anything to come up.
-related, almost complete loss of appetite. Consumption yesterday: a muffin (over the course of the day), a Venti Double Chocolate Chip Frappucino, and about six spoonfuls of chicken soup.
-swollen lymph nodes, and related difficulty swallowing. Anyone turning that into a dirty joke will be PM’d the most NSFW image I can find.
-apparently, some patchiness in the back of the throat. Not that I can see this myself.
-no real fever.
-headaches and throbbing in the ears.
-exhaustion and difficulty sleeping, but I can hardly attribute that to illness; my sleep schedule’s been fucked since midterms started.
Note: I’ve never had mono previously. Aaron’s also never had it. My roommate has, and we’re less than clinical in how we wash the dishes…and that’s about the only way I can think of that I would have gotten it, other than a spontaneous weakened-immune-system takeover.
I had strep - manifested as scarlet fever - a little over a month ago, completed a full course of penicillin, and thought it had gone away. The rapid strep test came back ‘very slightly positive’, and the rapid mono test negative, but the health center cautioned me that it was really too early to take the mono test, and they want me back in a week for another. They put me on another antibiotic for strep, which Wikipedia and other sources warn me has an 80-90% chance of causing a rash if what is in fact mono was misdiagnosed as strep.
About half an hour ago, I notice my back’s itching. Guess what. The rash. It looks like much the same shit that happened when I had the scarlet fever, though.
I’m really not sure what’s wrong with me at this point, and I have far too much to do in the last month-and-a-bit of this semester to simply lie in bed and wait for this to resolve itself. Does anyone have a better idea than I do as to the problem? And, ideally, how I avoid spreading this without restricting myself to communicating with the one who started this thread via the Internet?
I realize I’m hardly turning to a community full of experts, but really, any help would be appreciated. Thank you very much.
-a very annoyed, impatient, and worn-out Speak