Teen vaping addict finally quits after lung collapses twice

health

by tracy swartz

A self-proclaimed “vaping addict” is calling for a ban on vaping after his right lung collapsed twice and left him permanently scarred.

“You never think something like this will happen to you, but it did. It felt like my lungs were on fire,” said Carly Ozkurt, 20, of Wisconsin. told SWNS.

“I fell into the trap of thinking vaping was cool,” Ozkurt confessed. “But that’s stupid. I didn’t realize it until it was too late.”

Ozkurt’s plea continues What recent research has revealed Despite health experts warning of the risk of lung damage, heart attack, difficulty breathing and other dangerous side effects, 11.3% of American high school students report using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days. There is.

Ozkurt, a medical assistant from Eau Claire, started vaping as a sophomore in high school after noticing an older classmate doing it.

She thought it would be cool and less harmful than cigarettes, but for the first month, when her lungs started hurting, she had to “force” herself to enjoy it. did not become.

“An older friend bought me my first vape. It was extremely painful trying to inhale it,” Ozkurt admitted.

“I should have known from the beginning that it wasn’t a good thing,” she added. “But while I was doing it, I wanted to seem like the bad guy. I was 15 years old, naive and impressionable.”

Over time, Ozkurt got used to the feeling of breathing in and became addicted to the “nicotine buzz”, especially when feeling anxious or stressed.

Once the “buzz” wore off, Gen Zers stepped up their game and started smoking Elfvar disposable e-cigs every day to chase that feeling.

Three years later, in November 2021, Ozkurt’s right lung collapsed while smoking an e-cigarette in the bathroom at work.

“Suddenly, I felt a pull in my back. About an hour later, I started wheezing,” Ozkurt recalled, adding that although he was sent home from work, the pain was not “severe” enough to send him to the emergency room. said.

“But after a sleepless night, I still had the same pain and couldn’t even breathe. I felt like I was going to die,” she continued. “I went to the walk-in clinic and reported my symptoms, which included chest pain, shortness of breath, and back pain. They immediately sent me to the emergency room.”

A chest X-ray revealed that Ozkurt’s right lung was 50% collapsed.

Doctors manually re-inflated the man with a syringe, but warned him to stop vaping if he didn’t want it to happen again.

After three months of trying to kick the habit, Ozkurt started vaping regularly again.

After enduring a bad chest cold for several months, her lung collapsed again in November 2022.

She underwent surgery to fuse her lungs to the chest wall.

“After I had a CT scan and operated on my lungs, the doctors noticed that there were real scars at the base of my lungs and all over my lungs,” Ozkurt said. “When he regained consciousness, I asked him what caused it and he said it was definitely caused by the e-cigarette.”

After 1 year and 4 months of being in the habit of “on-again, off-again,” Ozkurt quit vaping for good on February 28 and hopes to never pick it up again.

She wants more people to realize that vaping is an addiction with real withdrawal symptoms, such as uncontrollable full-body tremors and extreme irritability.

She takes 1 milligram of Chantix, a pill that blocks nicotine in the brain to prevent smokers from enjoying it as much. And now she’s “finally” on track to end her first full life without vaping.

However, Ozkurt is concerned about the long-term health effects of years of e-cigarette use.

“I still don’t know if I caused irreparable damage because we don’t know the long-term effects,” she lamented. “I could die at 40 or 50, and it was all because of five years of peer pressure.”

Now, Ozkurt is trying to put peer pressure on others not to vape.

“I have friends who are a year or two younger than me. What I want to say to them is, don’t start,” she said. “That’s not cool. It’s just stupid.”