Gregory Robinson
A woman has issued a warning about the dangers of vaping after the sudden death of her teenage stepson.
Charlene Zorn, from North Carolina, decided to share the ordeal her family went through after her stepson, Solomon Wynn, 15, was taken off a ventilator and died last month.
The teen, who was known by his family to be a healthy teenager who 'loved' football and went to the gym every morning. However, a few months ago Wynn's health took a turn when he developed a 'bad cough'.
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His family, from Wilmington, took him to a doctor and Wynn was diagnosed with what they 'thought was bronchitis'.
Wynn was prescribed antibiotics, steroids and inhalers by doctors but when his condition failed to get better he was referred to a pulmonologist.
After going through allergy testing and X-rays, it was determined that Wynn had been vaping, which he then admitted. The teen confessed that his friends had 'showed him how to do it'.
"As parents, we had no clue," Wynn's stepmother told Fox News Digital. "We had no indication that he had been vaping. "Neither his father nor myself smoke, so there were no products in our house that he could get. It wasn't that it was something accessible to him. It was something he got through his friends."
Wynn's strength started to decline after he developed a cough to the point where he couldn't walk for even five minutes because his breathing was so labored.
"The CAT scan showed that there was fluid in three places on his lungs and surrounding his heart," Zorn said.
"He was supposed to see the cardiologist that following Monday because, obviously, they had concerns because it was affecting his heart. And then on that Friday, on June 16, he collapsed and then ended up in the hospital on a ventilator."
Wynn's friends and family were astonished when, just one day later, he died just days after his 15th birthday.
During Wynn's funeral, Zorn urged his friends and friends to avoid vaping because of the dangers.
"All these things that we thought Solomon was going to do — we thought he would play football all the way through high school," she said.
"He talked on and off about the military. He talked about jobs that he wanted to have," Zorn said. "We even joked about him even having a family someday. None of those things are going to happen now. … We have memories. That's all we have now."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states e-cigarettes are 'unsafe for kids, teens, and young adults'.
Most vapes contain nicotine, which is highly addictive and can harm adolescent brain development.
In the UK, it is against the law to sell nicotine vaping products to anyone under the age of 18 or for adults to buy them on their behalf.