This teenager received a “shock” diagnosis after vaping the equivalent of fifty cigarettes each day.
In an attempt to “fit in,” Jayden Richardson developed the habit when he was twelve, but by the time he was seventeen, his health had suffered.
When the Shropshire boy began coughing up blood on the final day of his August family vacation in Turkey, he hurried to the hospital after his flight return.
“The night before I had a bit of chest pain but didn’t really think much of it whatsoever. I woke up the next morning, had a quick go on my vape and just as if I had a bit of a chesty cough,” the teen explained.
Jayden reported that although he was coughing up “little bits of blood,” the coughing “wasn’t really bad at all.”
“But a couple hours later I had a few drinks and stuff and I got into the swimming pool,” he recalled. But as soon as he got in, he was coughing ‘up loads of blood’ and was pulled out.
“Gone straight to the toilet and I’m coughing up pint-loads of blood. It scared me to see, especially at a young age.”
“It was traumatic. That was probably going on for a good 10 minutes of me coughing up pretty heavy blood.”
When he returned to Birmingham and coughed up more blood, the hospital’s doctors originally thought he had a stomach ulcer.
Elita, his mother, said that she believed it might be related to the greasy food, alcohol, and kebabs that were consumed “every night” in Turkey.
Jayden was sent for lung X-rays, but they didn’t show anything until an endoscopy indicated that his lungs were seriously damaged.
“I think they were going through the options of everything not thinking that a kid of his age would have severe lung damage,” Elita said.
“A week later that’s when he had the camera down. The consultant said he’s never seen so much lung damage on a kid. It’s awful.”
“‘Excessive vaping’, that’s what they said. It was a shock.”
Days after the teen stopped vaping and was prescribed medication, the bleeding stopped.
But months later, on January 10, while celebrating his birthday, he “stupidly” used a vape. And he knew “straight away” that there would be blood when he began coughing later.
“I thought the damage was done and it would just heal itself and I thought that a few tokes on a vape wouldn’t affect me. But I was totally wrong and I can’t believe how easily it was to get the damage done again,” he said.
Jayden has promised to “never” use a vape again after experiencing constant pain and waiting for a CT scan.
“If I could go back to that moment when I first started [vaping] I’d tell myself ‘never to touch one of them’,” he explained. “It’s crazy how dangerous they are and what they can actually do to the human body. You don’t realise it when you do it. It just affects you in the long run. I would never touch one.”
