Six months with mono?

[laurenchouinard]

Six months ago I was diagnosed with mono.  I presented with an extremely sore throat, swollen glands, fatigue, and a fever.  I had the mono spot test done and it came back positive.  Six months later I am still testing positive for mono.  My symptoms only consist of extreme fatigue (only awake about 6 hours a day) and an occasional fever.  I have recently had repeated lab work and my IgM antibodies are very high.  Usually this means that I would have recently been infected or reinfected, by my IgM antibody levels have never gone down.  It has been 6 months, and I have felt like I have never gotten better throughout the whole time.  My doctor ordered other lab work recently and it all look fine.  I was negative for lyme, my thyroid was normal, an ultrasound on my spleen was normal, my whole blood count was normal, my liver function was normal, my white blood cell count was normal, my marker or inflammation was normal, and my chest X-ray was normal.  Basically every thing came back normal except for the positive mono spot and the high amount of IgM antibodies.  For six months I have felt completely exhausted, and now I am beginning to get emotionally tired of being sick.  Any ideas? Could this be something other than mono? Are there other tests I should have done? Any ideas are helpful (I have sort of stumped my doctors)

[LeslieR2540]

I am just seeing this, but my story is exactly the same.  What did you end up doing?  Did anything help?  Did you go to an infectious disease dr?

[9DodgeFan]

Hi, I find it very strange that you're still testing positive for the monospot test, 6 months after the initial infection.  I also find it somewhat strange that your blood cell count is normal; usually if you're fighting an infection (and you are), the WBC will be high.  Honestly, this just sounds like a bad case of mono/EBV to me!  I don't really think there are any other tests that would be helpful.  One thing you didn't mention is your age, which can be a big factor in how your body handles EBV.  With all the tests you've had done that came back OK (thyroid, lyme, etc.), that really doesn't leave a whole lot of other likely possibilities.  I would say that, combined with your high EBV titers, shows that you're still dealing with EBV.  The one other thing I would suggest is to see an Infectious Disease Specialist, as they'll be better equipped, so to speak, to handle more of a "severe" case like yours.  Hope things start going better soon!