Woman who went through 'one vape a week' diagnosed with cancer aged 21
When 22-year-old Kayley Boda took up vaping seven years ago, she could never have foreseen her supposedly harmless habit resulting in a gut-wrenching cancer diagnosis.
The Manchester-based retail assistant was only 15 when she enjoyed her first puff of an e-cigarette, despite only having dabbled in tobacco smoking a handful of times as a teen.
Keen on the wide range of flavours available but put off by the price, she eventually switched from reusable vapes to disposable ones, going through an entire 600-puff device each week.
Last November, however, Boda noticed a rash had suddenly developed all over her body, which she the doctors reportedly put down almost immediately as either shingles, chicken pox, or scabies.
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"I got treated for all three, and nothing worked," she told press recently. "It got the point where I was cutting myself from scratching so hard."
By the time January of this year rolled around, Boda had started coughing up 'brown, grainy mucus'.
Comparing it to the texture of brown sugar, she admitted: "At first I thought it was normal, because I vaped a lot, so I brushed it off."
Despite raising concerns with her local GP, she claims to have been turned away as many as eight times, ceaselessly being told she was suffering from a simple chest infection.
That was, until the substance she coughed up suddenly changed colour.
By March, Boda was bringing up a considerable amount of blood.
"They did an X-Ray and found a shadow on my lung," she looked back. "They told me they were 99% sure with me being so young that it wasn't cancer, so not to worry about it."
Minutes later, however, Boda was dealt news that would turn her world totally on its head.
Just 21 at the time, she recalled: "When I got the results back and they told me it was lung cancer, it felt so surreal. Before the diagnosis, I was very naive and thought that something like this would never happen to me."
The following four months saw Boda undergo as many as seven biopsies - where samples of the 'shadow' were taken - before being informed that the cancer was officially at stage one.
As a result, back in September, she went under the knife to have the lower lobe of her right lung removed, as well as the surrounding lymph nodes.
During the surgery, however, doctors found cancer in six of these areas, upping her diagnosis suddenly to stage three.
After waking up, Boda battled for breath, suffering an agonising pain in her side.
"I still can’t sleep on the side where my surgery was," she confessed. "I can't go up and down stairs on my own, I have to have a commode in my room."
It wasn't just the physical toll that the procedure had on her body, but a mental one.
She claimed: "I don't go out with my friends anymore because I’m so embarrassed that I can't even walk to the bottom of the road."
Insisting she now has PTSD, Boda continued: "I have the same dream every night, where I wake up in that hospital bed not being able to breathe, having to learn to walk again."
Despite her hellish experience, her brutal diagnosis meant that she was also forced to undergo full-fledged chemotherapy.
Following a disastrous first round in November, however, Boda is 'really scared' to go back.
"After the surgery, I started chemo and I had a terrible reaction to it," she explained. "I couldn't lift my head up, I was throwing up blood, I was urinating blood. I couldn’t eat, I couldn't sleep, I lost 4kg in four days."
She added: "I don’t want to feel how I did last time."
Despite still having a long road to recovery, Boda is now using her brush with death as a means of raising awareness of the dangerous of vaping.
"I’ve put the cancer down to vaping because my symptoms started a few months after I started disposable vapes, and there’s no lung cancer in my family," she explained.
"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."
Boda lastly advised: "Stay off the vapes, because they will catch up with you."
Rhianna Benson