So what I thought would be a minor cold actually turned out to be the most miserable, sniffly, sneezy cold I've ever had. Self obs below cut.
Cw: descriptions of messy sneezes and noseblows, talk of germs.
I didn't get much sleep the night before due to my nose being runny and blocked. I woke up in the morning with my throat absolutely on fire (no doubt due to me mouth-breathing all night) and my nose just completely full. Before I even had the chance to wake up properly, my poor nose was tickling and flaring and I had just a couple of seconds to bring my sheets over my nose before I helplessly let out a terribly messy, cold-filled sneeze. I immediately got up and grabbed some toilet paper from the bathroom and blew my nose wetly until I was uselessly honking into the now soaked wad.
This pattern continued all morning. I would feel a tickle deep in my nose, quickly clutch hold of the nearest tissue, my breath hitching a couple of times, squeezing my eyes shut, then inevitably pitch forward into the tissue with a tremendous, trumpeting sneeze. While I can normally stifle quite easily, these sneezes forced their way out of my nose, unable to be stifled at all. Any attempts to stifle would fail before my nose had even finished quivering - exploding out in a gross, sick-sounding 'HehhnCHOO!' The noise was honestly embarrassing, made even worse by the fact that my nose demanded a big, miserable, snotty blow after every single sneeze. I sounded like a sick elephant and my nose got pinker and pinker the more I sneezed.
I ran out of tissues by noon, but that didn't stop my cold from insisting that I continue letting out these dreadful sick sneezes. My nose quivered and dripped like a tap and I ended up desperately pressing my damp, used tissues under my red nostrils before letting out horrible wet squelchy sneezes into them. The air in my room must have been buzzing with millions of cold germs, constantly being emitted from my poor sick nose.
I feel like today I'm thankfully over the worst of it. I'm still sneezing, but they're less messy and more powerful and dry, threatening to blow over anything in front of me. I'm hoping tomorrow I'll be mostly recovered, but goodness, I really hope this is the worst cold I'll have!