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Welcome to Diagnosis: X, Part Two! I thought long and hard over the ending, and I hope you like it. Enjoy!

Diagnosis: X

Part Two

The moment we had gotten back to the hotel, my father cheerfully told my mother and sister my diagnosis, while I rushed to the nearest drain; just in time, too, I might add. I pleaded with my sister to switch beds with me, so at least I didn’t have to sleep on the floor.

The next morning, my condition had taken a downward spiral overnight, so we just packed up our bags and took off for home. I lay down in the back of the minivan, clutching my throbbing head. My stomach ached painfully, but I couldn’t eat anything because it would wind up regurgitated a minute later. I lay there, in utter agony, in worse pain than I’d ever felt. I’ve broken bones and torn tendons before, but those are over quickly; like a band-aid ripped off hastily. This was a long, drawn-out method of torture; a band-aid torn off slowly, taking bits of skin along with it. I tried to take my mind off the mystery illness (I was certain this was no flu) by listening to soft music or watching old anime DVDs. Nothing helped.

After five of our eight hours were up, we stopped briefly at a small gas station in Virginia. The warm aroma of slow-cooking barbecue that would have once made my mouth water now made my stomach churn painfully.

Six of our eight hours were up. I felt that if I couldn’t keep anything down I’d surely starve. My parents stopped at a local Wendy’s and ordered a small pack of chicken nuggets. Normally, just the thought of chicken nuggets disgusts me, (‘It’s the leftover chicken they scrape off the inside of the oven,’ I had always said.) but at this point, I didn’t care. I needed food, something edible, anything!

Needless to say, the nuggets showed up ten minutes later, but sadly, they weren’t nuggets anymore. Nasty, eh?

When we finally reached home, I barely had the strength to pull myself from the car, into the house and to my bed. I seemed so long since I had slept in an actual bed, I’d almost forgotten what it felt like. Although I love to travel, I’d never been so happy to be in Kentucky, so happy to be home.

The next few days were hell. Absolute hell. I’d never felt so helpless, so defenseless. If a burglar were to come, what would I do? There was nothing I could do! I couldn’t stand up straight, I couldn’t walk to the other side of the house, I couldn’t even stand up long enough to take a shower! I couldn’t speak right; my sentences came out jumbled and unintelligible. We visited doctor after doctor, hoping for an answer. Nobody had the slightest idea what was wrong with me.

As a last ditch effort, my mom took me to the medical clinic where she worked; who knew, maybe the answer had been right under our noses the whole time. She wheeled me into the clinic in a wheelchair, much to my chagrin. I hate riding in the wretched thing; it made me feel helpless beyond belief. I loathed the squeaking wheels and the pitying stares I attracted in the hallways. Once inside, the doctors weighed me; I had lost ten pounds in a couple days, due to the tiny amount of food I could keep down. I hadn’t looked in a mirror recently, but I knew I must look terrible. I imagined myself with sunken eyes, lank, dirty hair, chapped lips, deathly pale skin, and from what I could tell, visible ribs. I looked every part the hobo off the street; filthy and underfed.

After doctors and nurses poked and prodded me for what felt like the millionth time, (I had been stuck with so many I.V.’s and needles recently that I looked like I was on drugs.) they shipped my blood off to the lab to be scanned and processed and have tests run on it-again.

Hours later, a tall, friendly-looking nurse came into my quaint little hospital room with a clipboard. The fixed me with a kindly gaze and said cheerfully, “Your results are here!”

“Is this another case of mistaken influenza?” I rasped sarcastically. At this point, I didn’t care about being polite.

“Influenza?” She said. “No, no! Of course not! You’d be well over it by now if it were influenza!” She giggled.

“Then what’s wrong with me?” I tried to raise my voice, but my voice came out choked and stifled, and I fell into a monstrous coughing fit instead. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’ I thought, panicked. Was I going to end up as a documentary on the Discovery Channel?

After my coughing had subsided, she continued. “You see, we’ve found a great number of antibodies in your bloodstream, and the immune system doesn’t produce antibodies for influenza. Also, you’ve been ill entirely too long for a simple flu. Clearly, you are not suffering from influenza,”

My eyes narrowed as I tried to remember what antibodies were.

“So…?”

“So!” The nurse continued. “We’ve studied the results from the hospital in D.C., and run our own tests, and we are positive we have a correct diagnosis!”

“And what might that be?” I growled through my teeth. Was this nurse dangling me over the edge of a cliff for fun?

She whipped out a piece of paper and proudly announced, “Miss, you are suffering from Mononucleosis!”

The entire room was silent.

Mono?

Mono?!

It had taken them two weeks to diagnose Mono?! Not some freakishly rare, life-threatening disease? Did these doctors even go to medical school?!

Needless to say, I went back to school a week later. Against doctor’s orders, of course. My friends all happily informed me that they had thought I had gone on a safari in Morocco, and I would come back covered in tattoos and a cat with braided fur. I put up with a lot of crap about “Sarah’s got the Kissing Disease!” supplied mainly by my sister. Within a week my life was back to normal, I was worrying about grades and tests instead of being an oddity on the Discovery Channel.

However, if there’s one good thing about getting Mononucleosis on vacation, it’s that once you've contracted it, you'll never suffer through it again!

So ends my depressing tale...it's been almost a year since this happened, I'm shocked I can remember as much as I did. I hope you liked it. As always, please review, flames welcome.

God Bless,

Frenchie-chan