How everyone reacts when you find out you have mono
Your friends will hate you
Being sick sucks. Being sick at college sucks more. Long gone are the days where falling ill meant we could play hooky from school and spend the day binge watching Grey’s Anatomy while our dear mother catered to our every whim.
In college, being sick means skipping class and lying in your tainted, guilt-ridden bed because you know you should have toughed it out and gone anyways. It means staying in on Friday night and still having to call into work Saturday morning, knowing full well that you’re manager thinks you’re a hungover lying piece of shit. You add in a couple coughs for effect, but you know your efforts are futile.
I’ve been afflicted with my fair share of diseases here at Notre Dame. The common cold, pink eye, mono, the flu (surprisingly turned out not to be Ebola though, really thought I was a goner for a while). You name it, I’ve had it.
If my immune system were a dorm, it would be the wimpiest dorm on campus. Keenan would say Stanford, and Stanford would say Keenan, but we’ll let them duke that one out on their own.
After we’ve swallowed our pills, purchased our tissues, and whined to our parents on the phone for a while, we have one more duty to carry out before we are officially a part of the diseased. We need to tell our friends. We owe them this, as they are the people we spend the most time with, making them the most susceptible to our germs. Also in doing this, we get to throw ourselves a little pity party. Pity parties are fun. Look at me, I’m all clammy and feverish pay attention to me, feed me love and affection. You don’t want to eat at North because South is closer to you? Well that sucks. Because I’m sick. My way or the highway, bitch.
Our friends all respond to this dark news in many ways. Here are some of the different reactions of my friends when I told them I had been diagnosed with mono.
The friend who is terrified you and your dirty germs will infect them
The friend who tells it like it is
The friend who tries to tell you that this one is on you
The religious friend
The friend from high school who has never appreciated the distance between you more: