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Show Mono is still around By RODNEY A. POLLARY. M.D. disease." One disease that has been ever present in our society, but poorly understood is mononucleosis or infectious in-fectious "mono" or "the kissing We have seen several cases of mononucleosis lately and it seems to be more prevalent. It can mimic illnesses like strep throat, influenza and the common cold, so may be missed unless it is looked for. One good example is a 13-year-old girl that came to the office pom-plaining pom-plaining of a very sore throat and swollen glands. She had been tired and achy for about a week and thought she was over-exercising. Rest wasn't enough to make her feel good. Because she was so "run down" she felt like she was now getting sick. Her throat was extremely red, the tonsils looked like meatballs stuffed with cottage cheese and the glands under her jaw were the size of walnuts. She also had an enlarged en-larged spleen. The spleen is located under the left rib cage and cannot normally be felt by the pediatrician unless it is enlarged. A spleen can be enlarged for many reasons but is part of the disease process of mononucleosis. mono-nucleosis. A blood test was performed to confirm she had antibodies in her system trying to fight off the mononucleosis mono-nucleosis virus. A strep test was also positive for strep throat, meaning mean-ing she had strep throat on top of the mono. The treatment for this child was to give her penicillin for the strep infection and then tell her she would not get better right away. She was an avid gymnast and wanted to participate in her sport. Two things would prevent this. First, mononucleosis makes people peo-ple extremely tired and they have little energy. This can last for as short a time as two weeks, but may go on for two to three months. Second, the enlarged spleen is very fragile. If while exercising on a parallel bar or on the mat in a tumbling tumb-ling exercise, she should fall and damage the spleen it could cause internal bleeding and be life threatening. Most people with mononucleosis don't feel like doing much at all, but to protect them we advise them not to do any potential injury producing activities such as skiing, ice skating, skat-ing, sledding, etc. School is okay, but not gym. Mononucleosis, because it carries car-ries the name of being infectious, is felt to be very contagious. It is just I like any other virus. It will spread by kissing, sharing food or not washing hands properly. During the first few days of the illness it is probably more contagious conta-gious than other times. But since the disease has such prolonged symptoms, it should not prevent them from going back to school providing they are physically able. They need to be encouraged and prompted to go back to school. It is not uncommon to miss two to three weeks of school just because they are too tired to even get out of bed. Mononucleosis is thought to be a teenage disease. This is not true. The more recent tests that are available avail-able show that all age children can get this disease. The symptoms vary with age, so it is more difficult to diagnose in small children. So when do you worry about this disease? Since there is little treatment treat-ment for this illness aside from bedrest, bed-rest, liquids and Tylenol, it is a frustrating frus-trating disease. If your child is sicker sick-er longer than you think normal, or has had tonsillitis that does not get better, think of mononucleosis. If for no other reason than the reassurance reas-surance that you know why your child is so sick for so long, it makes sense to find out. |