So, having Mono totally sucks! I hate being tired. All through high school and my life I've always tried to monitor my sleep schedule so that I get around 8 hours of sleep every night and stick to a pretty solid bedtime, just because I like to get up early and have a productive day and that is super hard to do if you don't have a good basis of sleep to work with. Well, since getting sick around a week and a half ago, I haven't had a good night's sleep once! I am suddenly an insomniac and it is AWFUL! I'm just tired all of the time and then when it's finally time to sleep I can't, either because my head hurts too badly to sleep or my neck can't get comfortable on my pillow or I'm thirsty or my throat just kills. So, that was the dire situation on Friday that I was facing.
Friday (Not one of my best days, I'll admit):
8:00 a.m. Got up after a horrible night sleep.
9:00 a.m. Dragged myself to class, unshowered and ready to go right back to bed.
11:00 a.m. Drove home and got into work out clothes(my pajamas from the night before) Turned on my Jillian Michaels Killer Buns and Thighs tape and made it through the warmup and the first two exercises before I gave up out of complete exhaustion.
--Laid on the couch in a Mono induced zombie state.
12:00 p.m. Cancelled a study session with my Math study buddy.
12:30 p.m. Turned on National Treasure.
1:00 p.m. Dragged myself off the couch to make lunch. I had no appetite, but I realized my stomach kind of hurt, so I thought food would help.
Anyone that knows me well will already see what a mess I was in. I consider myself a pretty motivated person, and even when I am tired or stressed or just don't want to do something like exercise or homework I can pretty much get myself going and jump into it. Another thing about me, I don't usually watch movies, especially not alone, and never during the most productive part of the day.
As I laid there on the couch in a messy house, unshowered, with homework and exercise being neglected, not even texting my friends, it reminded me of one other time in my life when I had lost all motivation. One weekend right after I had moved out, I learned that my grandma had just passed away. I had just finished a very hard stressful week at school and I was just so tired. That weekend like this Friday, I had just laid in my bed, shut out from the world, and watched movies.
3:00 p.m. I got up. My sister called me saying she needed a ride to the testing center and so I got up to help her out. I brought along a leftover milkshake I had in the freezer. As Catherine took her test I laid in my car, eating ice cream and listening to a Christian rock station on the radio. Still not very productive, but at least I was out of the house. :)
4:00 p.m. I did my easy homework
6:30 p.m. Went to my little sisters' piano recital and ate lots of the cookies there.
8:00 p.m. Back at home. This is when I started to freak out a little bit. I was reviewing my day in my head and just thinking about how intensely gross I felt. All I'd had since 1:00 that day was sugar: ice cream, sugar-y cereal, brownies and a cookie. I hadn't worked out at all because I was too tired to do a single squat. I had laid around in dirty workout clothes/pajamas watching movies and only doing a couple easy school assignments. Plus I was still tired. Was this what my life would be like for the next two months of having Mono? I couldn't bear the thought.
But like the saying goes, when you've hit rock bottom, the only way you can go is up!
That night I took some ibuprofin right before I went to bed. In addition, I left a full water bottle by my bedside. When I woke up in the night I drank water and could go right back to sleep. Since having Mono I've had to sleep with my mouth open in order to keep my airway open because of my swollen tonsils and mild asthma. Since I live in such a dry place, I realized my insomnia was in large part due to dehydration and a dry mouth and throat.
The next morning after trying those new tricks I felt almost normal! So, I headed to the gym. I actually did a real workout! I love designing my own strength training workouts. Since getting sick though, I haven't had enough energy to really do one, cause they're pretty intense. Jillian Michael's book Slim for Life gave some guidelines to design a good circuit training work out and they are killer, but build muscle so quickly. As I was doing the workout at the gym, a lady on one of the elliptical machines saw me checking the workout plan I had made and asked what program I was doing, I told her I used Jillian Michaels' book to design my own program, she said that was very impressive. I was just thinking, "Aw yeah! And that's from a girl with Mono!" It was pretty awesome. :)
The rest of my day wasn't as great as that morning, but I felt better that I had gotten a work out in, so even though I was tired, I didn't have a panic attack about losing all my muscle again.
The next day was Sunday. Again, I used my tricks of ibuprofin before bed and then water in the night. I woke up feeling pretty good, to top things off, after church I had a giant smoothie and I can barely feel the Mono getting to me!
Two good days to the one bad, isn't a horrible ratio, and hopefully using the tricks I've learned, the good days will highly outnumber the bad!
Two good days to the one bad, isn't a horrible ratio, and hopefully using the tricks I've learned, the good days will highly outnumber the bad!
6 Tips and Tricks for living with Mononucleosis
1. Take ibuprofin! It helps with swollen tonsils, lymph nodes, and headache
2. Take ibuprofin before bed! Makes sleeping a lot easier
3. Hydrate up! Drink lots of water all the time, keep a water bottle by your bed
4. Eat at mealtimes. Mono can suppress appetite so even
if food doesn't sound appealing, eat-- it helps with fatigue
5. Watch your sugar intake. Even though it seems like it will give you energy,
too much will just make you feel worse.
6. Be patient with yourself. If you can't exercise one day, don't beat yourself up for it.
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