risky teammate wrote:
Isn't Epstein-Barr a fancy/polite way of saying mono?
And isn't mono highly contagious?
It's also associated with chronic illnesses/fatigue. I didn't know that I ever had mono, but I tested positive for the E-B virus antibodies. Maybe I did have mono, but it just went on and on? The chronic fatigue illnesses and overtraining syndrome don't seem to be well understood, and so going to a doctor, getting tests, etc doesn't seem to help most people. Since I knew it wasn't understood by doctors, I didn't bother trying to get help beyond for one visit to student health (as a grad student) where I had a test that came back with that E-B antibodies positive.
I was lucky my body recovered on its own after two years. Hopefully Cragg gets better quicker than that. (Does Geoff Roes still has overtraining syndrome after about a decade?) There are things that I see in a search about reactivated E-B, and it's possible that I've had this a few times in the 25 years since I recovered from that initial 2-year chronic fatigue event. There have been times where I've had sore lymph nodes, weakness, fatigue, etc. for months at a time since that initial event.
I'm far from an expert and don't have the answers, just sharing my experience.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/mononucleosis/expert-answers/mononucleosis/faq-20058564