SICK - The Cold Sore of Cold Sores

The Chronological Diary of a Monster Cold Sore.  My day by day picture diary!!!
Well as you can see, I haven't posted on here for a while.

We were frantic in the lead up to Christmas with lots of school and family events.  Then low & behold straight after Christmas it is my D.D's birthday.  But I was so run down that I came out with my FIRST EVER cold sore.  Even before DD's birthday.  I didn't even get out of bed to make her a cake and my partner had to do it!!!  And he did a great job but that is another post.

I have googled and googled and everywhere it says that 90% of the adult population has the virus that causes cold sores & that it is when you get run down that they appear.  But why do I still feel unclean & dirty???  We eat healthily and eat a variety of foods, just I still have become run down enough to have this huge growth on my face for a week now.

On the first night - New Years Day no less, I felt the tingling and the blister developing.  I have never had a cold sore before and as it was late all the pharmacies were closed, so I couldn't rush out and buy any cream.

-  Be warned - dont'scroll down if you don't want day by day pictures - and it really does look like something out of an alien movie.  It is just gross!!!

 Initially my lip just kept swelling up and the blister began to appear.

 I felt ABSOLUTELY dreadful and my lip kept getting bigger and my nose started to swell too.

 

 The next night we rang the locum doctor to come out, as everything was continuing to swell up and we were thinking it may have been a spider bite. My partner even suggested we went into the Emergency Dept at the hospital.    The locum assured us it was a cold sore, albeit an extremely big one.  The biggest he had ever seen!!!

 

 The blister started to weep and sections started to scab over.  While other sections still felt like the lip was growing bigger.

 

 It then became quite scabby and yellow.  The sore had crusted over in places, while it was still a blister and beginning to weep in other places. 

 It finally started turning brown and sections of the scab starting falling off.

Lower Lip is still very swollen & scab is appearing, whilst it is still weeping from the middle

 It got so big it took up 3/4 of my lower lip.

 This is what it currently looks like.  It has now been 1 week since I first started to feel the tingling feeling and the blister was starting to develop.  As they are highly contagious I have stayed away from everyone and even missed the first birthday of a very close friend's only child. I still feel fairly average.  I never realised that a cold sore could make someone feel so bad.  I thought it was merely like a pimple, it hurt if you touched it, but didn't affect the rest of your body, but how wrong I was!!!!!  The skin on my hands is now sore from so much washing and anti-bacterial hand wash in an attempt to stop the spread to any of the other members of the family.  Let alone the towels over my pillow and facewashers that I am continually washing in vinegar to hot water to kill off the virus.