News
A 15-year-old boy was left fighting for his life after becoming addicted to vaping donut flavoured e-liquid.
Zane Martin was taken in an ambulance to the intensive care unit in Loma Linda, California, where he was placed into a medically induced coma.
Doctors said that he’d become unable to breathe as a result of months of vaping.
When he eventually came to, he told reporters that he’d started off vaping with his friends down at a local skate park that they hang out at, but eventually became addicted to it as a result of the wide range of flavours available, of which his absolute favourite was donut.
He was in the Loma Linda Children’s Hospital for around a month, spending three weeks of those in the ICU.
Zane told ABC 7: “I liked how it tastes. It tastes like donuts, but no more. It’s really bad for you.”
It began with just a bit of shortness of breath and difficulty breathing, but got quickly worse and he went to hospital, where they sent him home with an inhaler and some paracetamol.
Zane continued: “The next day I tried to get up to go take a bath, and I couldn’t stand on my leg. It felt like it was going to snap,”
Credit: ABC 7
He’d contracted MRSA, which could be because of the vaping or because of the hospital visit – hospitals are one of the top places that the virus is contracted.
It’s worth reiterating that this could be completely unrelated to his vaping, but the doctors aren’t sure.
MRSA, for the uninitiated, is a serious staph infection that is particularly resistant to antibiotics.
He was then brought back to the hospital after he collapsed and became almost completely unable to breathe whilst at home.
Dr Jui Shaw, from the children’s hospital, said that his condition was potentially fatal. She said: “When he came in he was so close [to death] he almost had to go on a heart-and-lung machine.”
His condition was so severe that he had to undergo multiple surgeries and had a breathing tube to help improve the condition of his lungs.
Credit: ABC 7
Another of the hospital staff, Dr Michael Avesar, said: “He had what we call air leak. That’s when air can get out of the chest cavity, so into the chest and neck area.
“I believe that what we’re going to end up finding is that there may be more than one type of chemical can cause this kind of lung injury.”
The good news is that the doctors think Zane will be OK, but they haven’t got a clue what kind of long-term problems he could have.
Now, the teen has been completely put off vaping.
He concluded: “It’s very bad. I tell everyone else don’t vape unless you want to end up in the hospital like I am, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to have eight surgeries,”
Subscribe to our free mailing list and always be the first to receive the latest news and updates.