I used to keep a diary. I started recording my life and most certainly a bunch of silly stuff after reading the “Harriet the spy” series when I was a kid. I kept a diary off and on until I was in my late 20s, I guess. Hmmm, perhaps even my early 30s. The older I got, though, the less I wrote. I just didn’t have the time anymore…

My daily scribblings had essentially come to an end by the time I came down with infectious mononucleosis when I was in grad school at the University of Toronto (1995). That is a huge regret of mine, since a written record of that period would have come in handy right now. Oh well…who could have predicted what later came to pass?

Okay…ready…get set…go! As mentioned, in April of 1995 I came down with infectious mononucleosis. I don’t remember much from that period, except that I must have had enough symptoms to go to the doctor. Luckily, I still have my Canadian test results, which means that I can provide a few numbers. In mid April, my AST was 196, which is about ten times the high end of normal; my ALT was 458, and my alkaline phosphatase was 250, which is also way above the normal range (high end: 115 U/L).

But the main point is that I tested positive for “Heterophile AB” (=infectious mononucleosis, which is caused by the Epstein Barr virus, or EBV).

I don’t remember how long it took me to recover…I probably spent at least a couple of weeks, possibly a full month, locked inside my cosy (=tiny, but adorable) one-room Victorian attic apartment on Huron Street in Toronto…together with my beloved cat, Keshé. A very kind university friend did all my shopping, including cat food, of course!

As for the EBV aftermath, all I recall is that I was exhausted all the time and for a long time…so much so that my above-mentioned friend bought me a couple of books (which I still have) on the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Eh. Oh, and one more thing: at the end of May 2005, while Keshé and I were visiting my parents in the States, I came down with a nasty urinary tract infection. I was in such pain that my parents drove me to the Cape Cod Hospital emergency room, where, after a battery of unnecessary tests (I mean, hello?, even I knew that it was a UTI), I was finally diagnosed and treated. Well, I guess it is not surprising that my immune system was quite low at that point…

Anyway, I made a full recovery from EBV (and from the UTI, too, of course): I spent the summer of 1995 working full-time on a U.S. college campus. Then, as soon as Keshé and I returned to Canada, we moved from Toronto to another Canadian city, where I taught Italian language and literature full-time at a prestigious but smaller university. Oh, I loved my students, and I loved that job dearly, even though it was very challenging and also meant that I had to postpone graduation, since I didn’t have any spare time to do any research for my thesis. But what a golden opportunity for a Ph.D. student: a full-time teaching job!!!

Well, at the end of the academic year (=summer of 1996) Keshé and I moved back to the U.S. That fall I received and turned down an offer to teach again at the above-mentioned prestigious university (I still can’t believe I said no!). I left Keshé in the loving care of my parents and came to Italy to finish doing research for my Ph.D. thesis. And that was when some of my closest Italian buddies decided to introduce me to one of their friends…a guy called Stefano. 🙂 Well, needless to say, my original two-month “thesis research only” trip to Italy turned into a much longer stay. Aaah, true love!

Sometimes I think that, if I had accepted that Canadian teaching job, I would never have met Stefano. Eeek! Has anyone seen “Sliding Doors,” a (great) movie with Gwyneth Paltrow? Well, my life has been a succession of sliding doors…And I am positive that I have chosen the right ones…thus far!

Okay, let’s see. I stayed with friends in Florence until the spring of 1997. Yes, Stefano and I spent a lot of time together, but I also finished working on my thesis (doing research in various libraries, writing and so on). I returned to Toronto only to take my Latin Reading Exam, defend my thesis and attend my Ph.D. hooding ceremony…Then I dashed back to Italy to move in with Stefano (fall of 1997).

The fall/winter of 1998 was a very stressful time for me. I had two challenging jobs: 1) I was hired by a U.S. college to teach an Italian language course, and 2) I was also teaching English for one of the many English language schools here. So I taught Italian in the morning and English in the afternoon and evening (the latter job entailed driving around Tuscany, too). I still don’t know how I managed…but manage, I did!

Incidentally, this may seem like a long and boring list of unrelated and irrelevant details (and perhaps that is all it is…), but I have come to believe that stress and overwork might have contributed to the onset of my MGUS… This is pure speculation, of course…

Anyway, Stefano and I got married in May 1999. I continued to work like a maniac…

In November 1999 a monoclonal component showed up in routine blood tests…

In the year 2000 I started being plagued by yeast infections, which continued, off and on, until I began taking curcumin (I haven’t had one such infection since early 2006…not one).

Well, this is just a brief and extremely chatty introduction to my upcoming (!!!) series on the possible viral/MGUS connection, which I am working on in my snippets of free time…

Please be patient–this is not an easy topic, and I have a lot of material to examine…