The blood tests are done. The diagnosis is in. The doctor speaks the one dreaded word: Mono.

(Cue screaming high school students).

Mononucleosis, otherwise known as the “kissing disease,” is a disease that plagues high schools and colleges yearly. The disease often spreads through a group of people, both male and female, which then prompts students to frantically try to find out who spread it to whom. The question most often asked to a person with mono is: “Oh my God, who did you make out with?”

It seems that the majority of young adults have seemingly forgotten that mono is passed through other ways. Mono is passed through blood and saliva, and yes, that includes kissing, but more often it is passed through sharing drinks, straws, utensils, and toothbrushes. A teenager shares a water bottle with someone more often than they kiss him or her.

Mono has become a word of insult in the high school setting. Finding out a person has mono has become equivalent to finding out a person has the plague. The illness has become so blown out of proportion, and so many people are forgetting the simple facts. Mono is similar to strep throat or the flu; all three are contagious and all three can make a person feel sick for a week or more, but something about the word “mono” has become taboo.

Throughout my own four years of high school I have witnessed friends, peers, and even myself be accused of being a “whore” or a “slut” just because we had mono. Even if teenagers are “jokingly” making sexual remarks to other teenagers about having mono, it is unacceptable. Mono is not something that you can control if you get or not, getting mono is not based off of who or how many people you kiss, and even if it were, it still would not make it okay to degrade someone just because of a virus they had caught. In fact, most of the kids that make fun of other peers that have mono have most likely been infected with the virus at one point in their lives.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2005, the Epstein-Barr Virus, the virus that causes mononucleosis, had infected at least 98 percent of people in the world. Often, a person can be infected with the virus but never show symptoms, and other times a person can just disregard their symptoms and never see a doctor to get diagnosed. About 50 percent of teens and adults diagnosed go without ever knowing they have been infected with the virus.

Even with all of the accessible facts and statistics about mono, it still does not seem to stop a high school student from automatically accusing another of giving them mono at the first feeling of being sick. We have come to a point where mono is the first thought that enters a teenage mind at the first cough, sneeze, or beginning of a sore throat, and with that thought comes an automatic blame on someone else.

Accusing another of giving them mono has become an easy thing, an easy way to spread a rumor — a rumor that should not even be a big deal, but is.  Instead, I urge those people to stop. I urge those people to learn the facts and to not make offensive remarks about a virus that no one can control. I urge those people to shut up, grow up, and get over the ridiculous, exaggerated mononucleosis craze.