A woman who once ‘showered with’ her vape ended up having ‘black goo pouring out of her’ due to her vaping addiction.
Jordan Brielle, 32, experienced a range of symptoms before she was found unresponsive in bed by her partner back in May.
The woman from Ohio, US, had ‘black mucus’ dripping from her mouth and nose and was taken to hospital where doctors suctioned two litres of this grim ‘black’ fluid from her lungs. Brielle was then placed in a medically induced coma for 11 days.
Now, feeling lucky to be alive, the step-mum is warning others to steer clear of vaping for the sake of their life and health.
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Before her symptoms worsened to this scary ordeal, the woman vaped so much she even ‘slept with’ her e-cig and took it to the shower with her rather than spend the time apart from it.
But by mid-November, Brielle described she ‘began feeling a heaviness’ in her chest.
“At first it was just a respiratory infection or bronchitis so I kept going to the hospital with breathing problems,” she explained. “I had a horrible cough and was going to the hospital two or three times a week for help. I had little to no voice.”
The woman said she would just find herself getting sent home every time and described how she continued to feel symptoms similar to ‘80lbs of pressure’ laying across her chest area.
“I'd never felt so sick in my life,” she added. "My body was swelling up from my ankles to my kneecaps. I kept going to the hospital because I was progressively getting worse.
"My skin was turning grey, I couldn't focus, I was very discombobulated. It was hurting to walk."
By this point, these symptoms Brielle was experiencing got so bad she ‘could barely do anything’.
“Nobody knew what was actually wrong with me,” she added. “I felt like I was dying."
Having now given up vaping, she recalled the scary day her partner found her unconscious.
“He said I was gasping but couldn’t catch my breath. I was unresponsive and had a faint pulse,” she explained.
At the hospital, Brielle was told her lungs ‘were extremely damaged from smoking and vaping’ and she had to do breathing exercises before she could be discharged.
“I’ve been left with a minor brain injury due to lack of oxygen to my brain,” she added.
"The doctors told me there's a high possibility this could happen again. I'm better now in some ways but worse in other ways.”
Jess Battison