Thanksgiving was ruined last year for Phillpotts and his family after the unexpected happened, and fluid from his nose ran into the food.
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"I was preparing a meal and standing in the kitchen, and it just added itself to the ingredients," said Phillpotts, who moved to North Carolina two years ago from New York after his wife retired. "It screwed up the whole dinner. You could be anywhere. You could be on the airplane. You could be talking to anybody, and this thing just drains out of your face."
Phillpotts initially thought it was allergies, and then, various doctors diagnosed him with pneumonia and bronchitis.
"I was stuffing tissues up my nose," he said. "It became normal up until February, because I was up all night coughing. You're sitting here. You're a family man. You don't want to check out of the picture when it's something someone could readily fix."
Finally, he saw Dr. Alfred Iloreta at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. They learned quickly it was a cerebrospinal fluid leak.
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"It's the leakage of fluid that surrounds the brain to cushion it primarily to protect it from shock or trauma or anything like that," Dr. Iloreta said. "Sometimes when you have this leakage of the fluid from the brain, it can evolve into what we call an ascending infection. So bacteria can travel from the nose to the brain resulting in meningitis."
Doctors performed minimally invasive skull surgery using a flap of tissue harvested from Phillpotts' body to correct the problem.
"Have you ever been so congested that you can't breathe?" Phillpotts said. "All of sudden you can breathe again, and what a relief that was."
Dr. Iloreta said to watch out if you have a runny nose on one side of your nostril, especially if there's a salty taste and it comes with an intense headache.
It could be more than just a runny nose.
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