Spring Mononucleosis Outbreak Hits PEA

At Exeter, students face the constant struggle of sleep deprivation and a heavy workload. It is not uncommon to talk to another student who claims they’ve slept five or less hours every day for the past week. And in this fast-paced community we live in, there is little time to waste being sick.Much to many’s dismay, however, the Academy has experienced an outbreak of mononucleosis, often also referred to as simply “mono” or the “kissing disease.”Mono is transmitted by saliva and spreads on school campuses via the casual act of sharing drinks or the intimate act of kissing. Once infected, the incubation period can be from four to eight weeks.Characteristic symptoms of mono include fever, fatigue, difficulty swallowing and a sore throat. The particularly debilitating aspect of the illness, especially at Exeter, is that recovery can last for weeks.While sometimes it is easy to tell if one has mono, often the symptoms can be mistaken for a bad cold and lack of sleep, which hinder diagnosis and thus helps the disease spread. Other times one might think they have mono, but it turns out that one may just have a separate illness with a fever and sore throat.In order to be certain, one must go to the health center and get a blood test. According to Dr. Martha Fountain, temporary medical director, the health center also offers the mono spot test, but results can be misleading the first week. If you test positive, you definitely have mono, but if you test negative, you might still have mono, as it can take seven days to show.Fountain explained how diverse of a disease mono can be. “Mono can vary in its effect; some people can have no symptoms and don’t even know they have it, and some people can be very affected, and get very sick. The health center supports students on where they are [on the spectrum],” she said.Sometimes students can catch mono and never even know they had it.Fountain continued, “If you were to blood test every graduating high school student, most of them probably had mono and many of them may not have known. Some may have gotten more sleep for a week and some may have had trouble even going to school.”Specifically in Exeter’s case, Fountain said that “From what I know, no one has had to take a medical leave yet for mono.” It certainly remains a possibility though, as mono’s effects are extreme on Academy students. “Some people are significantly sick and can’t do academic work. Most of them describe want[ing] to start work, and work[ing] for an hour, and then they just hit a wall and can’t hold a book or hold their heads up—they can only sleep.”Fountain usually suggests to students who have mono that they conserve energy and try to only tackle necessary work and slowly ease back into daily life.“Rest is the main treatment,” Fountain said. She also commented on how staying healthy is vital yet difficult in an environment like Exeter’s. “I’ve read [that] if you don’t get proper sleep your immunity system drops 50%. How the students here aren’t sick a lot is pretty amazing. Trying to stay well is really hard, and sleep is such an important component.”Fountain also described why living with mono is different than a normal illness. “It’s different to miss class and try to catch back up when you’re sick at the same time.”Students agree, often finding it very hard to catch up on work after having mono. “I missed seven days of classes when I first got it, then a few classes here and there when the fatigue was too much,” upper Callan Malone said.Malone, however, praised the Academy’s solution, stating they helped create a plan to make sure she didn’t fall far behind with her school work.“The Academy was very helpful in putting a plan in place to catch back up especially with all the pressures that upper spring bring. Some teachers were more lenient than others. I ended up having to drop a class because one teacher didn't respond in a way that I could handle the work,” she said.Since mono proves to be such an exhausting disease, Malone was also given her sports block as a free block, which helped to keep her on top of her work. “I was out of tennis for about a month and eased my way back into it. I got my sports blocks to catch up on work, which was incredibly helpful.”Yet for Malone, it took a while to be diagnosed. “The health center sent me away for about four days due to a lack of fever and then finally admitted me when I came in at 4 am on a Monday morning in excruciating pain. Once admitted, the nurses were godsends and did everything they could to make me more comfortable.”After being told of students who claimed to have been turned away from the health center, Fountain responded, stating, “We see a lot of viral sore throats, if it stays for a week, there’s a good chance they’re positive [and have mono]. But on day two, we’re not sure. We can’t test every sore throat, you could just have a cold.”On the prevention of mono, Fountain stated the difficulty in knowing if a person has mono.“With mono, once you really have a diagnosis, you’re not very contagious. You’re contagious before actual symptoms occur—that’s why it spreads pretty easily.”She smiled, remarking “It’s hard to prevent it in high schools, but the bright side is that once you have mono, you can’t have it again.”