>>That makes... a lot more sense of why you mind colds so much.

It really does, yeah. You're the second person to explicitly say that to me, and I bet a lot of people are thinking it.

(It kind of reminds me of the time I had a very unusually small number of evening customers at work and was actually able to finish my entire cleaning checklist not only on time for once but *ahead* of schedule, and then I found out that on every other night of the week but mine, having that few customers in the evening was *normal*. No wonder all the other evening shift-leaders looked down on me for not being able to finish on time! *I* would look down on me if I thought *that* was the workload I was failing to handle!)

Now I just need to figure out how to explain it to people who *aren't* part of communities where it's widely understood just how awful depression is. Maybe leave it vague: "No, I can't [go to a party where one of the guests is known to be sick]/[work while sick, even from home]/[etc], I get very severe colds and I [would be]/[am about to be] laid out for the next few days. [I can work from home *next* week when it's just down to coughing fits.]"

Just knowing that I can't assume a shared base of "this is how colds feel" is probably most of the battle.