FLU or SEVERE COLD with bizarre pattern of symptoms VICKS anti viral to blame?

[PorridgePot]

My DH has a really nasty sore throat and man cold recently, resulting in a rare two days of work.

6 days ago, I started to get a scratchy throat so took a few squirts of Vicks anti viral spray. over the next 3 days i had a mild sore throat but nothing more.

then on day 5 i has severe throat pain in the night, but it soon lessened and woke up with an extremely deep voice and slight chestiness. still didn't feel generally ill.

day 4 a runny nose developed.

day 5, i came home from work after a struggling through the day with a heavy cold (teacher).

suddenly, during the course of the evening i developed flu like symptoms and feel a bit green round the gills and generally really, really poorly. i have dragged myself upstairs for an hour and am going back down to sleep in a minute.

my question is, does anyone have experience of vicks delaying a virus and then making it actually worse in the end?

this pattern of symptoms seems so weird. to feel soooo poorly suddenly on day 5 and 6 makes no sense to me.

Yes, this exact thing has happened to me twice! Both times I felt like I was getting a sore throat/cold so I used the Vicks first defence spray and lo and behold I felt much better... until about 5 days later when I developed the most horrendous cold/flu symptoms and felt absolutely dreadful. Both times it also developed into a chest infection which I had antibiotics for.
Now whenever I feel like I'm coming down with something I just let it take its natural course and it's never as bad as when I used the spray. I just dose myself up with the usual paracetamol/ibuprofen and rest as much as possible and it passes in about a week.
I'm convinced that the spray just delayed the inevitable and somehow made it worse by suppressing the virus and incubating it in my body for longer.

Another one here, ending up with horrendous chest infections after staving off sore throat/cold with that stuff.... it took me a couple of goes to make the connection.

Same here Giggorata, it was twice before I made the connection and the penny dropped that it was the spray that had made it worse in the long run

Same here. I now take a zinc supplant, and take echinacea drops as soon as I start feeling like something is coming, and it works great for me. And now the cold goes before it comes to anything. The echinacea drops were expensive, but they last for ages and definitely make the difference for me.