A father rushed his daughter to the hospital after a hole burst in her lung from vaping the equivalent of 400 cigarettes a week.
Mark Blythe broke down emotionally when he received a call saying his 17-year-old daughter, Kyla, had collapsed and turned ‘blue’ during a sleepover at a friend’s house early on May 11.
Kyla, 17, thought her vaping habit was harmless until one morning when her lung collapsed. Excessive vaping had caused a small air blister known as a pulmonary bleb to burst on her lung.
After nearly going into cardiac arrest, Kyla underwent a five-and-a-half-hour surgery to remove part of her lung. She remained in the hospital for another two weeks before being allowed to go home.
Kyla BlytheKyla’s father, Mark Blythe recalled the terrifying experience: “It was terrifying for me. I’ve cried like a baby. It was horrible to watch. I’ve been with her the whole time.”
He added, “It was life-threatening. It really did threaten her life because she was so close to having a cardiac arrest that Friday. They said she went blue. They thought she’d gone.”
Kyla had been vaping since she turned 15, consuming an entire 4,000-puff vape each week—the equivalent of 400 cigarettes a week, or 57 a day. Her ordeal has since made her fearful of the habit.
“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,” Kyla said. “Every day I would use the 4,000-puff ones and go through them in about a week. I thought they were harmless and wouldn’t do anything to anyone, even though I had seen so many things about them. 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 there for a few hours but ended up being there for two weeks, having surgeries and all this.”
Alarmed by his daughter’s close call with death, Mark is eager to warn other young people to “throw away vapes” because “it’s not worth it.”
The father of nine shared his harrowing experience: “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 attribute it to anything else but vaping.”
Her father Mark Blythe with Kyla in the hospitalHe recounted the frightening night: “She was at a friend’s house when I got a phone call at 4 a.m. saying she had collapsed and turned blue. I rushed over, and we took her to the hospital. Her lung had collapsed due to the hole caused by a pulmonary bleb. They put a drain in her lung, and she screamed—she’s a little girl who doesn’t like needles. She was close to having a cardiac arrest.”
“They rushed us to Newcastle, and she had the operation on Tuesday. It was a five-and-a-half-hour surgery, and she even had a seizure on the operating table.”
Mark explained what the surgeon told him: “He said these blebs can form on the lungs and that disposable vapes might be causing them to burst, puncturing holes in the lungs. It’s a growing issue; he’s done a lot of operations like this.”
Mark’s message is clear: “It’s not worth it. Throw away the vapes.”
Tamera Glenn writes about stories from all over the world.
