For most people, the summer before entering high school is an exciting time – you’re growing up, starting to find your own way in the world, getting ready for the enormous thing that is being a high-schooler. 

Mine was pretty different.

In June 2012, I was gearing up to be a freshman. I’d been a committed dancer all my life, and was attending my first away-from-home 4-week summer dance intensive. As a mom now, I can’t fathom sending my 14-year-old daughter to New York on her own, but there were a few big reasons my parents were ok with it:

1. The owners of the program were close with the owners of the dance studio I attended.
2. I would be living in a house with several of my friends from home; out of 11 other girls, 6 were from my dance studio.
3. A friend’s mom would be one of our two “house moms” assigned to live with and care for us – shop for groceries and make our meals, provide transportation, take us on outings, and generally provide much of what a mom would at home.

So I wasn’t completely on my own yet (that would come the following summer). On June 17th, my parents moved me into the boarding house, and the plan was to be picked up at the end of the program, on July 15th. For a week and a half, everything was fine. I spent the days in class, attended extracurricular activities with my housemates and shared meals with them, and generally had a good time. 

About halfway through week 2, I suddenly came down with what you would think was the classic stomach bug – high fevers (102°+), nausea and vomiting, alternating chills and sweats, diarrhea, loss of appetite, fatigue, and a sore stomach. I was allowed to stay home from classes to rest and recover. Helpful, right? You would think so. 

Unfortunately, neither house mom did much at all to care for me until & unless my parents brought it to the attention of higher-up staff, and even then it was, at most, the absolute bare minimum. My mom kept in continuous contact with me to check on what my symptoms were, how I’d been helped, when anyone checked in on me, what food, drink, or medicine had been offered to me, etc. At the times when nobody had checked in on or cared for me for crazy long amounts of time and my parents would bring it up to the staff, the house moms claimed I was lying. Yeah, it was a shit show.

Note: A few of my housemates/friends would try to help out and bring me food, but they also had to be careful to stay away and not get themselves sick…. Plus it wasn’t their paying job!

On the 28th, after a few days of not being able to keep much of anything down, no improvement in my symptoms, and my parents fighting tooth and nail to get care for me, one of the house moms took me to a nearby urgent care center. I was “diagnosed” with dehydration (duh, it was a struggle to keep fluids down, if I was even provided with any in the first place), given IV fluids, and sent “home”. The house moms tried to tell me I had to go sit and observe all my classes, but that was shut down by my parents when I told them I wasn’t feeling up to it. I still could barely get out of bed without feeling nauseous.

On the 30th, a friend’s mom was coming up to visit her, and my parents sent a care package along, filled with snacks, books, magazines, and comfort items… The Fault in Our Stars, A Wrinkle In Time, Bop, what throwbacks!! If you knew my mom, it won’t come as a surprise that she was excited to include googly hamster stickers to share with the other girls. Anyways, these items were a lifeline for the sick, bored teenager who had barely eaten in days and had quickly exhausted her pile of entertainment (this was still the flip phone era, at least for me, and, being potentially contagious, I didn’t have access to the shared TV).

Friend’s mom offered to have me ride home with her if I wasn’t feeling up to finishing the program. I told my mom I should probably see it through because “we paid so much for this”… (“we”?)… I also cited having “started learning the jazz number” for the ending showcase, so clearly the stakes were high. I didn’t go back to PIttsburgh with her, but I absolutely appreciated the visit and the extra care she showed me that day.

My symptoms worsened overnight that night and things hadn’t improved with the house moms, so my parents decided in the morning that they were going to drive up, get a hotel, and have me stay with them for a few nights to recover and then be able to get back to classes. While they packed and drove, the program owners finally sent one of the older dancers to care for me for the day. My parents arrived that night and got me settled into the hotel with them.

The next day, 7/2, we decided to go back to the urgent care center since I’d shown no improvement. Luckily they didn’t write off my symptoms as dehydration this time – they ran some quick tests, and I tested positive for the good old ‘kissing disease’…. Mono.

Looking back, this didn’t really explain my symptoms to a T, but I guess hindsight is 20/20! I didn’t have a sore throat or rashes, and mono doesn’t usually present with nausea/vomiting. But it would explain my fevers and fatigue, headaches, and sore stomach. When you have mono, your spleen can become enlarged, causing pain and soreness, and physical activity greatly increases the risk of it rupturing.

Well, no physical activity meant no more dance classes for me. I’d have to leave the program and go home – doctor’s orders. But with how I’d been feeling, this was honestly kind of a relief. My parents packed up my room at the house and we returned to Pittsburgh, thinking that a few weeks of rest would heal me right up.

Boy, were we wrong.