11 June 2024 , 12:45
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A teenager who thought vapes were harmless was rushed to hospital with a collapsed lung after unknowingly smoking the equivalent of 400 cigarettes in just one week.
17-year-old Kyla Blight collapsed and turned “blue” while sleeping over at a friend's house and was rushed into a five-and-a-half hour long surgery to remove part of her lung after her heart almost stopped beating.
Her “terrified” dad, Mark Blight, is now urging parents to be aware of the life-threatening dangers of vaping. In Kyla’s case, a small air blister known as a pulmonary bleb developed in her lung. The blister is thought to have burst due to excessive vaping, which in turn caused her lung to collapse.
Kyla was only 15 when she began vaping, and would often get through a 4,000 puff vape every week – the nicotine equivalent of 400 cigarettes. Taking to Facebook, her dad Mark urged young people to throw their vapes away because “it's not worth it”. The dad-of-nine from Egremont, Cumbria, said: “I've been to hell and back with Kyla over the last couple of weeks. I just put it down to vaping, they can't put it down to anything else but vaping that's caused this.
Kayla's dad Mark is urging young people to give up vaping (Kennedy News & Media)“She was at a friend's house and I got a phone call at 4am that she had collapsed and gone blue. I went round for her. We took her down to the hospital. Her lung collapsed this time due to the hole. They put a drain in her. She's a little girl who doesn't like needles. She screamed. She was close to having a cardiac arrest.
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“They rushed us into Newcastle and she had the operation on Tuesday. It was a five and a half hour operation. She'd had a seizure on the operating table. I was talking to the surgeon and he was saying about these blebs that can form on the lungs. They think it is the throw-away vapes that burst these blebs and puncture a hole in your lungs.
“Apparently it's a big thing now. He's done a lot of operations like this. It was terrifying for me. I cried like a baby. It was horrible to watch. I've been with her the whole time. It really did threaten her life because she was so close to having a cardiac arrest on that Friday. They said she went blue. They thought she'd gone.”
Full-time carer Mark says issues with Kyla’s health first began in November 2023 when she was rushed to hospital after he thought she was having a heart attack. An X-ray later found the teen had a hole in her lung, which developed from a pulmonary bleb. She returned to hospital in February 2024 and was told she had been healed. But on May 11, the bleb burst and saw her lung collapse.
Mark admitted he didn’t realise Kyla had started vaping at age 15 and wasn’t aware of the extent of her smoking habits. The 61-year-old said he himself vaped for 13 years to help quit smoking but had no issues.
He is now warning against the use of disposable vapes after seeing the impacts it has had on Kyla’s health. Mark said: “People underestimate how dangerous they can be. I used them to stop smoking 13 years ago and it's never bothered me at all. Although you think it doesn't bother you, it might do later on after what happened to Kyla. It's scared me.
Kyla was only 15 when she began vaping (Kennedy News & Media)
The student was hopitalised for two weeks (Kennedy News & Media)“For kids there should definitely be a ban, especially the throw-away ones. These chemicals that they've got in them haven't been tested properly. Until the government does tests on it, people are going to do it. The doctor said he sees a lot more of it now than he used to. He did say there are a lot of young ones with holes in their lungs.
“I would say to parents, watching your kid do this, you're going to go through what I went through. It's just not worth it. For kids, they don't understand until it happens to them. That's why I wrote on my Facebook. I'm going to have to make young kids aware of this.”
Kyla says the experience has left her “terrified” and put her off vaping in the future after being bed bound in hospital for weeks. Speaking about her early experiences with vaping, she said: “When I was 15 it started becoming a popular thing. All my friends were doing it. I just thought it would be harmless and that I would be fine.
“Every day I would use the 4,000 puff ones and I would go through them in about a week. I honestly thought they were harmless and wouldn't do anything to anyone, even though I had seen so many things about it.
“I just feel like everyone has that same view. But now I won't touch them. I wouldn't go near them. The situation has really scared me out of them. I was terrified. We went in there thinking we were only going to be in there for a few hours but ended up being there for two weeks having surgeries and all this.”
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