It sounds like mono to me, and very similar to what I'm experiencing at the moment. I also feel your frustration at the mounting cost of multiple trips to medical professionals. I have decent insurance and with 2 visits to my PCP, 1 trip to an Urgent Care, and many many prescriptions, the co-pays are starting to hurt.

This has had me thinking that I must be crazy too. From what I can tell, I've been battling this since the beginning of June. On 6/14 I saw my doctor for a fever, severe headache, achiness to my eyeballs (when I'd move them to look at stuff), my neck, and congestion. She diagnosed me with a sinus infection, prescribed a Z-pack and called it a day. In her defense, I was pretty sure it was a sinus infection too. A week later I'm feeling worse, not better, The fever is gone, but everything else has gotten worse and now there's an annoying cough going on too. I head back to my doctor on 6/21, get a lecture about my weight and the need to make some lifestyle changes (I am rather overweight, but have also lost 48lbs and have seen a significant drop in my blood pressure since my last visit in October, so I think the lifestyle changes I've made speak for themselves), and she proceeded to give me, a freaking therapist, the Beck Depression Inventory, stating that my infection has been treated, the only issues I'm still facing are my asthma, which will lessen with weightloss, and she then encouraged me to seek therapy for my depression. Look up the BDI and you'll see why someone with mono would have an elevated score.

So a week later, 2 weeks after my first appointment and 3 weeks since my symptoms started, I decided to call in again because the pain in my throat is so bad that I haven't eaten anything other than a banana in over a week because it's too painful to swallow. I'm also not drinking enough water due to that pain and feel like there is an actually lump in my throat. When I called in, they again told me that I'm fine, all the issues are in my head, and that it's entirely unnecessary for me to come back in. I asked to schedule an appointment for the following day anyway, and they refused. So I hung up, went to the urgent care who looked at my throat, ran the test, and prescribed steroids and a numbing solution. Which really helped, but now that both of those medications have run out, I'm back to being in such pain that I can't do anything. Heck, I can't even sleep from the pain. And seriously, that week in between my 2nd appointment and the urgent care visit had me wondering if I had lost my mind and really was so depressed that I couldn't function. My days were looking something like: get up at 7, be at work by 8, get all my client contacts in by noon, go home and nap on my lunch break, do all my paperwork in the afternoon, crawl into be again around 5, sleep until 9, take more meds, then to bed for the night. It was insane.

At the moment I still have an ache in my neck, extreme fatigue (at least 1, sometimes 2 naps per day), inner ear pain, and a throat so swollen i can't eat and can barely sip water. From what I'm reading, self-care and rest is what you need. However, seek out medical attention if you get a sharp pain to your upper left abdomen (which would be your spleen rupturing) or have difficulty breathing from the swelling.

*hug* I'm sorry, this whole thing really does suck.

I'm 36 and I've been dealing with Mono for nearly 8 weeks now. My symptoms have been fatigue, body aches, swollen throat (sore the first week), Nausea just started last week, headache, neck ache. After two weeks I felt like I was getting better, I just felt some malaise, headaches and maybe some muscle aches and I managed to get back to running 5-6 days a week for about 3 weeks. Then I had a rather stressful week and it all got worse. I cant stand this, my whole summer has been taken from me. I have a 4 year old and I don't have the energy to take him places and do fun things. I've had ultrasounds to make sure my liver and spleen are ok, they are, and so are my kidneys and pancreas. I've had blood work done, everything is fine except I have the EBV antibodies in my system. I start to think maybe this is something else but then I come across message boards like this. Ive read about chronic mono, and ffs, I hope I don't have that. I can't live like this. I'm depressed. I'm trying all kinds of supplements and remedies. It just doesn't go away. I'm sorry you're all going through this but it is a little comforting that I'm not alone. I find that drinking coffee, and taking sudafed help a little during the day and taking b-12 and drinking alcohol in the evening help me feel more human. I also have been taking airborne, turmeric, drinking green tea and eating honey randomly. Ive been eating the healthiest I ever had, more veggies, organic, whole grains... I'm going crazy.