A “vaping addict” who experienced two collapses of her right lung is demanding that they be outlawed. Five years ago, Karlee Ozkurt started vaping due to peer pressure at school.
The now 20-year-old claims that making the move was the “worst decision” she has ever made and the greatest mistake of her life. Furthermore, it has permanently damaged her lung, far from being “cool”.
The first time she knew she had a problem, she was in the loo at work. She waited two days to seek medical attention because she believed she was experiencing a back muscle spasm.
Doctors discovered her lung had collapsed only then. After the incident in November 2021, it had to be re-expanded using a needle and syringe. However, it collapsed once more in November 2022, a year later, necessitating surgery to attach it to the chest wall.
She now has a higher chance of it happening a third time because of the two collapses. She also mentioned that, after four failed efforts spanning two years, she had finally given up vaping and had successfully gone through her first month without using one.
She wishes more people understood that vaping can be an addiction, complete with genuine withdrawal symptoms like uncontrollably shaking the body and intense irritation. She is also worried about the long-term health repercussions that six years of vaping have given her, even if research is still in its early stages.
You never think this kind of thing will happen to you, but it did happen to me, the medical assistant stated. My lung felt as though it were on fire. I made the mistake of believing vaping was hip, but it’s not cool. It was too late for me to realise.
The concerning problem is that we don’t know the long-term repercussions, so I still don’t know if I’ve done irreversible harm. I could pass away at the age of 40 or 50 due to a five-year habit that I developed under peer pressure.
Karlee, from USA, claims she developed an addiction to the “nicotine buzz” after gradually growing accustomed to the sensation of inhaling. However, she claimed that she started using it even more when the initial feeling subsided.
Three years after taking up the habit, Karlee’s right lung collapsed while she was cleaning the toilets at work. She said: “I was at work, cleaning the bathrooms – we didn’t have any customers so I went to the toilet to vape.
When my manager saw me vaping, we both started giggling uncontrollably. It felt as though I had just pulled a back muscle. After an hour or so, I began to wheeze.
I was told to go home from work, but I didn’t feel that it needed to be taken to the emergency room. However, even after a restless night, the pain persisted and my breathing became difficult. I thought I was going to die.
I visited the walk-in clinic and informed them of my back, chest, and shortness of breath problems. They immediately sent me to the emergency room.
Karlee’s right lung has 50% collapsed, according to a chest x-ray. Physicians used a syringe to manually re-inflate it, but they cautioned her from vaping in case it happened again.
However, Karlee resumed her normal habit after three months, and a year later, she started having more health problems. “They said it was a spontaneous lung collapse, but vaping didn’t help,” the woman stated.
My lung collapsed once more in November 2022, following months of having a bad cold. Every time it occurs, there’s an increased risk of recurrence; hence, I need surgery this time to fuse my lung to my chest wall.
My doctor discovered some significant scarring on the bottom and along the entire length of my lung following a CT scan and surgery. I asked him what might have caused it when I was conscious, and he assured me that vaping was definitely the culprit.
But even so, Karlee was unable to give up entirely, and for the following year and a half, she vaped occasionally while attempting to stop. But as of right now, Karlee believes she has successfully kicked the habit; she hasn’t touched a vape since February 28 and is receiving assistance from anti-smoking medication.
You don’t need to vape to live—it’s just a habit to break, she continued. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life breaking habits that take three or four weeks to break.
Don’t even start, I want to tell my friends who are a year or two younger than me. It’s just dumb, nothing special about it.
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