Girl so 'attached' to vape she fell asleep with it claims she's got 'popcorn lung'
A 20-year-old girl who has been diagnosed with the medical condition referred to as 'popcorn lung' reckons it's because of her vaping habit.
Abby Flynn said she'd never smoked a single cigarette in her life but took up 'trendy' vaping about a year and a half ago and got through disposable vapes at the rate of one a day.
In terms of nicotine intake that's about 140 cigarettes a week and it was costing her the massive sum of £135 a month.
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She said it ended up leading to her developing a cough which got so bad she could barely breathe, resulting in her having to go to hospital.
Given oxygen, a series of x-rays and medication by the fine folks over at Milton Keynes University Hospital, doctors diagnosed her with the disease known as bronchiolitis obliterans which is also known as 'popcorn lung'.
Popcorn lung is an uncommon disease which occurs when scar tissue builds up in the lungs which blocks airflow and leaves a person struggling to breathe.
Doctors made it clear to Abby that if she didn't ditch her attachment to vaping then within a decade she'd be relying on a machine to do her breathing and she's said it's one hell of a 'wake up call'.
She said: "You get addicted without realising. I was going through one vape a day without fail for about a year and a half, which is the equivalent of 20 cigarettes per vape.
"I had it in my hand when I was driving. I'd be asleep and wake up and it would be in my hand. It was just constantly attached to me.
"The doctor said that if I didn't stop vaping within the next year or two, I'll be on an oxygen machine when I'm 30. It was a bit of a wakeup call."
Abby has had asthma since she was nine years old, but was certain as she struggled to breathe in a walk-in centre that it was something other than an asthma attack.
She revealed that her best friend 'threw her vape away' after hearing what had happened to Abby, and is stuck taking eight steroids each morning until she can get her next doctor's appointment.
Abby warned that vaping was 'really not worth it' and that while 'a lot of people think it's not going to happen to them' it has happened to her.
She said people should 'throw their vapes in the bin' and do their best to 'reduce how much you use it.
Other big fans of vaping have had similar serious health scares and ended up swearing off the supposed substitution for cigarettes.
Joe Harker