A North Carolina grandfather thought the runny nose he had been dealing with for years was allergies.It turns out it was far worse, and it could have been fatal if not treated correctly.Greg Phillpotts told WTVD he thought his running nose was his usual allergies. "I have an annual allergy that comes around in February," Phillpotts said. "Sometimes it won't go away, understand. Sometimes I gotta go find some Jamaican roots to drink, anything just to knock the cough down."Last year, he says it got much worse. "I was preparing a meal and, you know, standing in the kitchen and it just added itself to the ingredients," he said. "You could be anywhere. You could be on the airplane, could be anywhere. You could be talking to somebody and this thing just drains right out of your face."He dealt with diagnosis after diagnosis before he met Dr. Alfred Iloreta. Iloreta discovered Phillpotts was suffering from a cerebrospinal fluid leak. Doctors say the condition is very rare. "Sometimes when you have this leakage of fluid from the brain, it can evolve into what we call an ascending infection, so infection can transmit or bacteria can transit from the nose into the brain resulting in meningitis," Iloreta explained. Iloreta says the meningitis that could come from the condition has a 50 percent mortality rate.After a minimally invasive surgery on Phillpotts' skull, doctors were able to fix the leak. "You ever been so congested you can't breathe, and all of a sudden, you could breathe again? You know what a relief that was?" Phillpotts said.