I'll try and keep this short. I was on Little Corn Island off the coast of Nicaragua during a vacation after I visited my family in the mainland. I went out for a swim and while walking back to the hotel I felt a strange pain in my neck. I was with my Dad and a few aunts and uncles when I reached the hotel and felt extremely drowsy, which was weird since I had slept really well the previous night and it was barely 1 pm. So when I reach the room I threw myself on to the bed and covered myself in the sheets since I was so damn cold. I felt like I was freezing (I didn't know at the time that the air conditioner wasn't on, and it was also 88 degrees outside and probably inside as well). My Dad started getting really worried, asking if I was ok. The rest of my family went out to the bar a short walk down the island (which is TINY and very underdeveloped), but my Dad insisted he stay with me. So I'm all like "no Dad, go, I'll be fine I'm just gonna take a nap here." I started getting a really bad headache and feeling really dizzy.

He decides to leave and within 30 minutes I'm on the verge of passing out, I have no strength to get out of bed, and the pain in my neck and head was the second worst I pain I have ever felt in my life (second only to accidentally dropping boiling water on myself, I still have a few scars).

So I get the strength to get my laptop and walk to the front of the hotel where there is some internet connection, and looked up my symptoms. Everything said that fever accompanied by neck stiffness (which I had alongside the pain) is a sign of meningitis, and that you should get to the emergency room immediately. Our cell phones didn't work on the island so I couldn't call my Dad, and even if I was able to get a boat to the big island, where theres an airport, and a plane to the mainland (where there would be a hospital), it would have taken at least 5 hours. If I did have meningitis, I would have been screwed. So... I get so scared and I'm in so much pain I start contemplating the possibility of dying there. I ran to the hotel's bar (where my family didn't visit) and asked for someone to please take me to a doctor. One of the workers then walked me to a little house on the island where the doctor and a nurse lived, with very basic medical equipment.

They couldn't run any tests but they assured me I probably didn't have meningitis. I spend the whole day there, with my fever going down extremely slowly with the medication they gave me. It wasn't meningitis of course, I wouldn't be alive if it was, but I was still so scared that I genuinely thought I had a chance of dying. Of not seeing my mom and sister before I do. Of dying thousands of miles away from Los Angeles. Of dying during a time that was supposed to be happy. I keeped my cool but I still thought so, and it was the strangest thing I have ever felt in my entire life.