Woman who started vaping at 15 given months to live after being told 'not to worry' by doctors

A 22-year-old woman has been diagnosed with lung cancer and given 18 months to live after she started vaping at 15.

Manchester woman Kayley Boda had been getting through a 600 puff vape a week when in January last year she started coughing up a brown substance with 'grainy bits' in.

She visited doctors eight times and kept being turned away as they told her she had a chest infection until she started coughing up blood and they couldn't ignore that.

Seven biopsies later Kayley was diagnosed with lung cancer and has since been through surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung, as well as received chemotherapy treatment.

Given the all clear in February 2026, Kayley started experiencing 'serious chest pains' not long afterwards and was sadly told two months later that the cancer had returned in the pleural lining and she had less than two years to live.

She was told this was a very rare occurrence and 'usually something they see in patients that are 80 years old'.

22-year-old Kayley started coughing up brown mucus in January 2025, doctors told her not to worry but in August she was diagnosed with cancer (Kayley Boda/SWNS)

Her family is raising money through a GoFundMe, which you can donate to here, to send her to a clinical trial in Germany which could help prolong her life.

The 22-year-old has also been warning others about the dangers of vaping and the damage it's done to her.

"A few months after I switched from reusable vapes to disposable ones, I started coughing up brown, grainy mucus," she explained.

"Doctors turned me away eight times with a chest infection. Then I started coughing up blood, so they did an x-ray and found a shadow on my lung. They told me they were 99 percent sure with me being so young that it wasn't cancer, so not to worry about it.

"When I got the results back and they told me it was lung cancer, it felt so surreal. Before the diagnosis, I was very naïve and thought that something like this would never happen to me."

Doctors have told her they don't know exactly what caused her lung cancer but smoking and vaping didn't help.

Given the all clear in February 2026, Kayley has since been told her cancer has returned and she has 18 months to live (Kayley Boda/SWNS)

Kaylee explained that getting the all clear 'felt amazing' but now she hasn't got the words that can describe how she feels two months on having been told the cancer returned.

She reckons the vaping is the cause of her cancer as her symptoms started a few months after she switched to disposable vapes and there's not a history of lung cancer in her family.

She said: "I haven’t vaped for three months, I’ve made my partner stop, I’ve made my mum stop, I’m urging all my friends to stop.

"Stay off the vapes, because they will catch up with you."

Back in November 2024 she'd been treated for shingles, chicken pox and scabies over a rash that had developed all over her body, but 'nothing worked', and when she started coughing up brown mucus she 'brushed it off' because she vaped a lot.

When the mucus turned to blood in March 2025 that's when doctors gave her an x-ray and told her not to worry, but in August that year she was informed she had stage one lung cancer.

During surgery to remove part of her lung it was upstaged to three after cancer was found in six lymph nodes, and Kayley had to learn to walk again after her operation and couldn't breathe properly.

Once again her GoFundMe can be found here.