Blue Hortensia Soap (self, female)

[Chanel_no5]

So, I got some new hand soap for my bathroom. I don't have a specific one I always buy, I usually just take what's cheap and what has a bright, strong colour that I'm drawn to. So I've used as different ones as green apple, blackberry, raspberry, roses, whatever, you know?

Okay, so this time I took a nice blue one. Blue hortensia (aka hydrangea). 

Yeah, um, I'm definitely allergic to this scent. I don't know if it's just the soap or the flower too, I don't recall being allergic to any flowers, except hyacinths, and I'm sure I've been around these before. But the soap, my nose definitely doesn't agree with it. First off, it's strong. Like, if I wash my hands with it I smell of it the rest of the day, and so does the bathroom. It's this sweet, lingering, almost sticky scent. Not unpleasant per say, but very... intrusive.  

It doesn't start right away, at first it just feels kinda… sticky. And then there's like a very light prickling just barely inside my nostrils. It's not high up the nose where it usually has to be to set of a sneeze, but it just starts to tickle a little in one spot, and then it spreads, and then basically my whole nose tickles - still not very high up, but all around the nostrils and the wings of the nose. This is where I start to rub at it. It's not super itchy, not like a mosquito bite or a stinging nettle type of itch, but more like a constant, CONSTANT tickle! 

In the past, in order to sneeze the irritation has to be fairly high up in my nose; I know the exact line I have to cross when inducing, for example. So imagine my surprise when this lower-part-of-the-nose tickle first made me sneeze once.  A pretty regular, medium-volume, medium-wet sneeze. 

And then another time. Same kind of sneeze. 

And AGAIN. This time one that felt like it came from the very depths of my lungs, and wet as fuck. 

And then I had a double sneeze to finish it off, equally powerful and wet. Like, I didn't try to cover or anything because I'm alone and normally I don't sneeze that wetly, but I had to change my top because I soaked myself.  

First off, I don't think I've ever had a fit like that if I wasn't really, really sick with a cold or something. My sleeping pills set me off sometimes as well, weirdly enough. But a fit from a scent? Nope.   My nose still feels tickly, but I don't feel like I'm going to sneeze again. 

I'm... working under the assumption that it's the soap, anyway. We'll see if it happens again. I can't get a new one for another week either way because I'm super tight for money, but if I could I probably would. Not so much for the sneezing, but MAN, the fragrance is so cloying and strong it's distracting.   

 

ETA: I'm also an idiot, because it only JUST struck me that rubbing my nose with my hands that smell of this soap that I'm clearly allergic to, isn't the smartest idea if you want the tickle to go away...!!    

Edited May 20, 2019 by Chanel_no5

[Klingon]

Bless you!