Man with constant runny nose given alarming diagnosis
A man who was plagued by a runny nose for five years has discovered his seemingly innocuous symptoms turned out to be far more serious.
Greg Phillpotts, from the US state of North Carolina, has described how liquid dripping from his nose became a common occurrence in his daily life, including last year’s Thanksgiving.
“I was preparing a meal and standing in the kitchen and it just added itself to the ingredients – it screwed up the whole dinner,” he recalled to US television station ABC11.
Mr Phillpotts believed he was constantly battling allergies while some doctors even diagnosed him with pneumonia and bronchitis.
“I was stuffing tissues up my nose,” he said on how he managed the unfortunate situation.
Yet it wasn’t until a visit to a doctor in New York that he learnt the true extent of his illness.
Mr Phillpotts’ runny nose was in fact a cerebrospinal fluid leak – where liquid from around his brain was escaping through his nose.
“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 Alfred Iloreta at Mount Sinai Hospital told ABC11.
He said if his problem went untreated it could develop into meningitis with bacteria from the nose travelling up to the brain.
Doctors were able to perform minimally invasive skull surgery on Mr Phillpotts and rectify the issue.
Dr Iloreta urged anyone with a runny nostril on one side and severe headaches to get themselves checked out.
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