Woman who swapped cigarettes for vapes to be ‘healthier’ almost died from side effect
A woman who decided she wanted to be healthier and quit cigarettes ended up having a serious health scare after she switched onto vaping.
The health impacts of smoking are well documented; it's one of the most self-destructive things you can legally do, as you spend all your time and money sucking down cigarette smoke which wrecks your lungs and threatens your health in all sorts of other ways.
Zoe Shackleford first started smoking when she was 18, but after four years, she tried to go to a healthier alternative in the form of vapes.
Vaping is generally recognised to be healthier than smoking, in the same way that if you're going to be hit by a car, you'd rather it was lighter, slower and something best avoided altogether.
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Anyhow, Shackleford vaped for several years and then switched onto disposable vapes just a few weeks before she almost died.
She said she woke up with a sore throat and was barely able to breathe, which she thought might have been due to a cold, but over the next couple of days, she struggled even more until she couldn't even do the simple tasks of daily life.
Going to hospital on 17 August, Zoe was told her airways were at 50 percent capacity and if she'd waited any longer before seeking medical attention, she might have died.
"I've been smoking on and off since I was 18 but the disposable vapes are the ones that took me out," the Virginia woman said.
"I was really scared, I was crying at the hospital, I couldn't believe this was my life. I was smoking cigarettes when I got out of high school and I swapped to vaping because when vapes came out they were meant to be so much better than smoking cigarettes.
"I started vaping probably eight years ago, I had the big ones. The problems started when I started switching over to the disposable vapes."
She was put on oxygen for four days and spent a total of nine days in hospital before being diagnosed with hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a condition where the lungs have an allergic reaction to something and can lead to scar tissue developing which makes it hard to breathe.
It turned out that there was a chemical in the disposable vape she was using which her lungs reacted negatively to, with the 29-year-old saying it was 'basically closing my airway off'.
"They said if I hadn't come that night, I probably wouldn't have made it to the hospital," Zoe explained, and says she's now been given asthma medication and has to use an inhaler.
She's also ditched the cigarettes and vapes, though is finding it hard going to stay away from the addictive habits.
She said: "It's a little bit of a challenge because I do miss it but I think I miss the motion more, I feel like I snack more.
"If you can get to a point of stopping I would because that was one of the scariest experiences of my life and honestly it's not worth it, you only get one life.
"Something so simple as stopping vaping can help save it."
Joe Harker