I have a cold...or cancer, I can't tell

I was feeling fine on Saturday.  I went to class and went for a bike ride.  Pretty normal routine.  At around 7 o'clock at night i got a sore throat.  I mean like almost immediately.  At first I thought it might be some sort of off shellfish poisoning (you can never be too sure of clams).  Yes, you read that correctly, I thought clams caused my sore throat.

Anyway, I woke up about 3AM with a horrible sore throat, headache, sines problems, you name it.  I took some Nyquil to get back to sleep but ended up staying in bed 'till noon.  This is VERY unlike me.  I'm usually up a 6:30 on Sundays for a long ride.

All day I just bumed around not doing anything really.  I tool some Dayquil which, of course, says if you have high blood pressure you shouldn't take it.  Or, at least, you should ask your doctor.  I have asked my doctor in the past and he said it was no big deal.  In my mind, however, this sounds like "It's no big deal, unless you don't want to die."

So this morning I started googling cures for a sore throat.  Gargling with salt water, tea, cayeene pepper, you name it.  As I've mentioned before, though, there's a side effect of googling anything medical.  It also turns out that a sore throat could be any number of maladies that, if left untreated, could lead to all kinds of crazy things...

I understand the need for medical literature to be complete, but is it really necessary to say things like "it could be a cold, or cancer"?