Imagine being too tired to attend any classes, having to miss sports practices and sleeping all day long. Now add a sore throat, a headache and a general feeling of sickness for as long as six weeks. This image is just part of what it means to have mononucleosis in college.
Director of Health Services Jack Turco said mononucleosis is a relatively common viral infection caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. He said it is common in an environment where "you have many young people living together, like a college."
Mono at the College
He said students who have not had mono when they enter Dartmouth are somewhat likely to get it within their four years here.
Turco said many Dartmouth students get mono each year. The most severe cases are admitted to Dick's House. Dick's House harbored 14 students suffering from mono in 1995 and 13 mono patients in 1994.
"Those are just the ones admitted to Dick's House, we diagnose at least two to three times that each year," Turco said.
He added, "There are always a few people on campus with it."Mono is mildly contagious and is spread by salivary secretions, giving it the nickname "the kissing disease."
"Once you get mono, you never get it again because your body makes antibodies," Turco said.
Once a person gets infected with the disease, there is a one to two week, and possibly longer, incubation period before symptoms begin to show.
The most infectious part of the illness is right before diagnosis, but people with mono can be contagious for months, according to Turco.
Diagnosing and preventing mono
Turco said to diagnose mono, a doctor performs a simple blood test that measures antibodies for the disease. He said there is no effective treatment of the virus, although painkillers like Tylenol, decongestants and steroids such as Prednisone can help alleviate the symptoms.
Common symptoms of mono include a headache, fever, sore throat, fatigue, swollen lymph nodes and a swollen spleen. Turco said symptoms are usually better after six weeks.
People with mono should be careful to avoid contact sports because there is the danger of a ruptured spleen, which becomes enlarged with the illness, Turco said.
He said he suspects mononucleosis, along with other illnesses, is more widespread in the winter. He said this could be because people tend to congregate in closed rooms where germs can spread more easily.
There is nothing students can do to prevent mono, Turco said, but "people may be more apt to catch it after being run down by another virus." Sleeping plenty and eating well make the body more able to fight off viral infections, he added.
Students' accounts of suffering
While they managed to continue taking classes, many students said they struggled with chronic fatigue.
Libby Reder '99 said she is just now getting over mono. While not diagnosed until after Christmas, she said she is sure she had it during finals last term and possibly in November.
The most frustrating thing about mono, Reder said, is "there is nothing you can do about it."
She said the doctors told her it was normal to get up for class at 8 a.m. and be "deathly tired" just two hours later. Reder added she sometimes could not even get up for class, but that "comes with the territory."
Still recovering from her illness, Reder said she gets about eight hours of sleep each night in addition to her naps this term, but at home during the break she slept up to 16 hours each day.
Reder was planning to play intramural ice hockey this term, she said, but doctors told her to avoid contact sports.
Reder sings in the Rockapellas, an all-female a cappella group, and she said it was difficult to make it through three-hour practices.
"At least five Rockapellas said they had mono their freshman winter," she said.
Elizabeth Davis '99 said she started feeling bad the first day she returned from winter break, and she spent the next weekend at Dick's House, where she was diagnosed with mononucleosis.
Davis said she thinks she got mono while she was at home in December. She said her boyfriend, who is a sophomore at the College, has mono now.
Davis said she was advised by administrators and professors to drop a course at the beginning of the term. She said the professors of her other two courses have been very understanding.
Davis said she spent the first week and a half of the term sleeping most of the day. "I felt like I had no control. I was so tired I couldn't do anything," she said.
She said she felt better for a week or so, and then had a relapse of mono. Davis said, "The first time I felt sick and tired, the second time I was just tired."
Davis is a coxswain for the freshman lightweight crew team and she said she missed two to three weeks of practice.
She added she is "still taking it easy ... practice involves a lot of yelling."
Benjamin Hill '99 suffered from mono during Fall term finals. He said he "didn't have a horrible case," and was able to go to his classes, though he often fell asleep in them.
Hill said he has "no idea" where he got mono, but his girlfriend, a freshman at Dartmouth, never got it.
He would sleep all night, get up and go to classes and then come home and sleep again, Hill said.
His professors were understanding even though it was difficult for them to rearrange final exam schedules, he said. He also said he managed to pass his finals.
Hill rowed with the crew team last term and said he missed almost every practice while he had mono.
He said he is still tired even today, although he is no longer infectious.
Erika Patrick '99 said she had mono in November and all through winter break, but she did not realize she had it for several weeks.
She said she was able to keep up with her classes last term, but it was hard to get up in the mornings and it was a struggle to get to class.
She did not tell her professors last term that she had mono since she did not know herself, Patrick said. She said she didn't think it was a big deal at the time, but looking back, "I definitely would have told them if I had known."
Patrick said she told her professors that she had mono at the very beginning of this term in case she had a relapse.
Patrick rows on the freshman crew team and said she "got really behind." She missed all practices last term after Thanksgiving as well as the training during the break.
