A woman has spoken up about her concern that her coma-ridden 12-year-old daughter will pass away from vaping.
She suffered an infection that made it difficult for her to breathe, and she has asthma.
Her oxygen levels were quite low, so when she was brought to A&E, the physicians immediately put her into critical care.
After that, doctors induced a three-day coma in the asthmatic patient to help her fight off the infection. She’s at home now getting better.
Despite not being “heavily vaping,” her mother claimed that physicians warned her that vaping had left her lungs “very weak.”
Speaking about her daughter’s horrific experience, she added, “The doctors explained that she would have been in a better position to fight off the infection if she had not been vaping.”
“The doctors said that the outcome would have been completely different if She had arrived at the hospital any later.”
“I can’t even begin to think about that.”
One evening as she was getting ready for bed, she started coughing suddenly, but her parents thought it was just asthma.
Throughout the night, she attempted to manage her symptoms with her nebulizer and inhaler.
But she was still having trouble breathing less than twenty-four hours later.
She was coughing the same as she always did.
She called me that morning as I was dropping my other two kids off at school, saying, Come back mummy, I don’t feel well, I’m afraid.
Returning home to give Sarah her nebulizer and inhaler, she made a quick run to the shops but was interrupted by a call from her breathless daughter, who was “barely able to string a sentence together.”
Her oxygen levels had become dangerously low, the doctors discovered after her father hurried her to the Royal Victoria Hospital.
An X-ray of the lungs was displayed by the doctors, revealing one had suffered severe damage.
It hurt to see her like that, with cables, tubes, and machines all over the place. As a mother, I simply felt powerless. It was the stuff of nightmares.
The main misconception regarding vapes, according to Fidelma Carter, chief of public health at NICHS, is that they are safer than cigarettes.
This is untrue, and in order to stop more young people from starting to vape and becoming hooked to it because they believe it to be risk-free, the message needs to be changed.
Just as with tobacco, the long-term health implications are unknown.
Physicians are concerned that those who started smoking at a young age may see an increase in lung conditions, dental problems, and perhaps cancer in the next decades.
Leading paediatricians had earlier this year warned that a “disturbing” teenage vaping epidemic was causing children to be hospitalised for lung problems brought on by vaping.
According to the NHS, forty kids and teenagers were sent to hospitals in England last year as a result of “vaping-related disorders,” which can include lung damage or exacerbation of asthma symptoms. This number increased from 11 two years prior.
According to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this month, 4.5 million Britons vape regularly or seldom, an increase of about 500,000 in just a single year.
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