randibear
Honored Contributor (10K+ posts)
Member # 11290
posted
i'm wondering if there's a connection between mono (mononeuclosis..spelling??) and lyme.
i had a horrible case of mono when i was in high school. had to be hospitalized and then when i went home i had to sleep in the living room cause it was away from the family.
i was out over a month and had to be home schooled to keep up.
i remember the doctor telling mom he had never seen such enlarged glands. cna't remember which ones tho. just remember being so sick. nobody else in the family got it.
now my one sister, who has ra, had rheumatic fever, really bad. nobody else got it.
so could those illnesses as a child, in fact, have been lyme?
because both of us now have chronic debilitating illness.
-------------------- do not look back when the only course is forward Posts: 12262 | From texas | Registered: Mar 2007
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Marz
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 3446
posted
I've wondered this too randibear. I brought my lab tests from results from LLMD to my PCP years ago.
When he saw the titers for EBV he asked when I had mono and said the titers were really high.
Never had mono that I know of, but had rheumatic fever when I was 13. Missed 3 months of school and slept for days.
But mono is a virus and rheumatic fever is bacterial from strep I think.
Posts: 1297 | From USA | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
My daughter was never sick when she was younger but just got mono this year!. And a couple months before that was diagnosed with h-pylori. I am sure it is related to the lyme.
Posts: 23 | From Canada | Registered: Oct 2013
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posted
Yes, there is a link. As I recall, mono is a pretty straightforward diagnosis, caused by either EBV or cytomegalovirus. But the trick is that the fatigue, joint pains, and swollen glands of mono look like Lyme, and can sometimes be worsened by an underlying case of chronic Lyme.
This info came from our daughter's first Lyme Dr. several years ago. The Dr. concluded that her positive mono test back in college had actually been a part of her on-going and very slowly worsening Lyme disease.
Posts: 228 | From Mass. | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
I had Lyme for probably five or six years, but didn't know. At the time, I was kind of fatigued, and I had some joint pain that seemed weird for a 17 year old, but it wasn't a huge problem, so when going to a few specialists didn't clear it up, I just kind of stopped going to doctors.
Then in grad school, I'm pretty sure I got mono from a friend. I was sleeping 16 or 18 hours a day all of a sudden, and I pretty much just crashed and never recovered, until eventually I saw an LLMD and got diagnosed.
Which is also when they ran bloodwork, that showed I had the antibodies or whatever for mono. He'd asked when I had mono, and I told him I didn't know that I had.
Posts: 306 | From Brownsville, PA | Registered: Jul 2007
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posted
most people don't KNOW when they have mono. All they know is that they feel sick, some times quite sick with respiratory symptoms, fever, sore throat for a week or two.
How sick you get depends on how strong your immune system is. For some people the mono (EBV) never goes away and develops into a chronic fatigue syndrome.
Mono can certainly run yourself down enough to help the Lyme and possibly other co infections to flourish, that you might have previously been holding at bay.
Posts: 803 | From USA | Registered: Oct 2013
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CherylSue
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 13077
posted
I had mono when I was 5 years old. I've never been over energetic. I wish I had more stamina, but I always pushed myself.
I think it did make me susceptible to chronic lyme. Although I'm in a partial remission right now, somedays I am more tired than usual.
Posts: 1954 | From Illinois | Registered: Aug 2007
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