Pfeiffer's Glandular Fever

The lymph nodes swell — at the neck, in the armpits, in the groin. Your throat hurts as though you have swallowed broken glass. The fever comes, stays, goes, comes back. And beneath all of it lies an exhaustion that cannot be slept away — not ordinary tiredness, but a deep, leaden heaviness that lasts weeks, sometimes months. You no longer function. You can no longer. Your system has pulled the emergency brake, and no one knows exactly when it will start again.

Medically, Pfeiffer's glandular fever is an infection with the Epstein-Barr virus — a pathogen that more than ninety percent of all adults carry within them at some point in their lives. Most never notice it. But in your case, the virus found something it could grow in. A breeding ground. A system that was already exhausted before the pathogen arrived.