For decades, medical experts have grappled with ways to mitigate the harm done to human health by tobacco and smoking. Quitting cigarettes and smoking is often the goal for many who want to improve their health, but it’s not always that easy.
In 2003, the first E-cigarettes, also known as vape pens, hit the market as a way to potentially help smokers improve their overall health while learning to curb their addictions. According to 19-year-old Maryland resident Claire Chung, vape pens aren’t nearly as safe as their manufacturers would have the world believe.
Chung shared a picture to Instagram on Dec. 29, 2019, that featured her lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to a monitor with an IV fed into her hand.
The reason for her hospitalization? Massive lung damage, which she explained the hospital believed to be caused by her vaping pen.
“Please share this post with anyone who uses a juul, vape, e-cig, wax/oil cartridges, etc,” she wrote.
“For the past 3 weeks, I had a consistent high fever of 104 with no other symptoms whatsoever. From this, we assumed the flu or a cold so after a couple weeks of taking OTC meds with nothing helping, I went to get checked out further. After considerations of malaria, autoimmune disorders, and many many other tests, a chest x-ray showed what they though [sic] was slight pneumonia.”She went on to explain that although she had been prescribed antibiotics for the suspected pneumonia, her fever kept spiking—and when she returned to the hospital, a CT scan revealed lungs that had suffered severe and widespread damage from her consistent vaping use. She wrote:
“After conducting many more tests and a bronchoscopy, it was determined that there was no infection and that my lung tissue was just completely destroyed from using juuls and vapes and oil cartridges.”
She followed up by posting a picture of her scans contrasted with those of healthy lungs, and the difference was stark. Where a healthy lung CT shows up black, she wrote, her lungs were filled with a hazy white—a sign of severe lung damage.
“Please take it from personal experience that this is NOT worth it from something as stupid as a nicotine device,“ she wrote. ”The stories that you’re hearing online are REAL. Death was a VERY real possibility, I am still hospitalized on a laundry list of iv drugs and steroids, I may have permanent scarring in my lungs.”
The data determining whether or not legal vaping cartridges are harmful is still up in the air. For Chung, the chance that someone else could end up like her seemed too great—so she put out her warning, encouraging others to turn away from the trendy smoking alternative.
“Just because you can’t feel it doesn’t mean it’s not happening,“ she added. ”You don’t understand regret until your doctors are staring you in the face telling you they don’t know if they can save your life, knowing in your head that you willingly brought it upon yourself despite countless warnings to stop.”
