I’ll get a head cold maybe two or three times a year. The symptoms usually begin as a sore throat and proceed in a somewhat predictable pattern before disappearing about a week later:
A localized area of soreness/pain/inflamation will seemingly march around my head from, say, the back left side of my throat, to the right side, to up into my into my right sinus, back into my throat, on and on.
Now I’m not talking about spreading per se – like water spreads on cloth. I’m talking about (…at least what feels like…) a patch of “infection” moving around from one spot to another; and after it leaves an area that spot will feel perfectly healthy again. (In my mind I can’t help but picture the microbes as a literal army tramping around the inside of my head as a pack, “conquering” a healthy patch of ground, encountering defenders, and moving on en masse to fresh territory.) Others who have described the same sensation even talk of the cold “settling” in some achey body part that is entirely disconnected from their heads.
Every time I envision this homespunny version of a cold infection, I catch myself. Surely that’s not how infections work, right? Right?