90-Second Read: She narrowly survived Hantavirus 30 years ago. Here’s what it was like.

Montiel says her mother stills cries thinking about her harrowing experience with Hantavirus, which, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, can have a fatality rate up to 38%, depending on the type of syndrome caused by it. I want to go to heaven.'" Now 38, Montiel says it's been surreal watching the little-known virus that almost took her life three decades ago make international headlines over the past week, as a deadly Hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship has stoked fear around the world. Thirty years later, the shadow of Hantavirus still looms over Montiel's life. Montiel's parents eventually took her to a hospital where a different doctor figured out the truth: Montiel had Hantavirus − and needed to get to a children's hospital for supportive care.

Per the CDC, there's still no treatment for Hantavirus. It also gave her health anxiety − a lingering dread that, one day, either the Hantavirus, or some other deadly pathogen, will infect her again. This is not the start of an epidemic," she stated in a recent Hantavirus briefing. At the age of 5, Montiel had felt sick for about a week, right around Halloween. My mom tells me that she remembers, when they did send me to the ambulance, that she was letting me know that, 'We're going to see you, but there's a possibility that you might wake up and be in heaven,' " Montiel says.

In a May 7 media briefing, the World Health Organization said that "while this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk as low." "When I caught it, nobody else in my family caught it," Montiel says. So I was just waiting for something bad to happen, because I knew, 'OK, you were supposed to die during that time.'" Montiel isn't totally sure how she caught Hantavirus, which is primarily contracted via exposure to the urine, droppings or saliva of rodents. This is not the start of a pandemic." Montiel believes that's true, though she understands why some have anxiety around Hantavirus. It's so surreal, because growing up, I wanted to learn more about the Hantavirus," she says. At first, her doctor told her family it was just.

Doctors told her family they couldn't believe she survived. Even as a child, I was always afraid it was going to come back or that I was going to die by 10-years-old," she says. But as her symptoms worsened and the antibiotics she'd been prescribed didn't do much, it became clear something else was going on. At the time of her infection, Montiel says one of her doctors remarked that she was the youngest patient they'd seen yet survive the virus. They took her to more doctors, but they all maintained it was just the flu.