A Virginia college student says her years of vaping landed her in the hospital fighting for her life.
Brooke Zimmerly, from Virginia Beach, said she vaped her JUUL regularly for three to four years without issue.
Earlier this year, she started experiencing nausea and near-constant vomiting, but assumed she had the flu or pneumonia.
She went to the hospital, where doctors determined that her illness was caused by her vaping habit, WHSV reported.
Zimmerly was in the ICU for five days, where she was hooked up to breathing machines, but she is expected to make a full recovery.
Brooke Zimmerly, from Virginia Beach, Virginia, said she vaped regularly for three to four years. Pictured: Zimmerly in the hospital
Earlier this year, Zimmerly (left and right) experienced nausea and vomiting for weeks. She thought she had the flu or pneumonia but, after the symptoms didn’t go away, she went to the hospital
Zimmerly told WHSV that she’d seen stories of people suffering vaping-related lung illnesses in the news, but was skeptical.
‘I saw it on the news, I kinda just thought it was a tactic to have young teens and kids stop vaping,’ Zimmerly, a senior at James Madison University, said.
‘I didn’t think it would happen to me.’
After a few days of experiencing flu-like symptoms, she went to the hospital.
‘They kept me because I was vomiting and I needed to keep the medicine I was taking down,’ Zimmerly said.
‘So, they kept me overnight but things just kept getting worse.’
Doctors took X-rays of her lungs, which came back extremely hazy.
‘It really looked like someone photoshopped clouds in replacement of my lungs,’ she told 13 News Now.
An X-ray revealed hazy-looking lungs (pictured), causing Zimmerly to remark that it looked like ‘someone photoshopped clouds in replacement of lungs’
After learning about her vaping habit, doctors determined her illness was caused by e-cigarettes. Zimmerly spent five days in the ICU hooked up to an IV (left) and a breathing machine (right)
Once her medical team learned that she was using e-cigarettes, they immediately determined her illness to be a vaping injury.
Zimmerly spent five days in the ICU, where she was hooked up to an IV and a breathing machine.
‘Last week my mom said that they were kind of telling her to look into talking to the hospital chaplain,’ she told WHSV.
‘Because they just didn’t know where I was gonna go or if I was gonna make it.’
Zimmerly has stopped vaping completely and she hopes her experience inspires others to quit as well.
‘If I could help one person throw away any kind of vaping device that they were using it would make me happy,’ she told WHSV.
Doctors weren’t unsure if she was going to survive the hospital stay, but she is now expected to make full recovery. Pictured: Zimmerly, left, with her partner
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that 2,291 people have developed EVALI (e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung illness) in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
The agency decided to only include cases that resulted in a hospitalization and removed 175 non-hospitalization cases from its previous count.
The vaping death toll has risen to 48 people across 25 states and Washington, DC, the CDC said on Thursday.
Most of the victims are male and under the age of 35, with ages of those who died ranging from 17 to 75.
New figures from the CDC say bootleg ‘Dank Vapes’ have been driving the epidemic.
Last month, officials announced a breakthrough when they found that a thick, gooey substance called vitamin E acetate in a sizable number of the samples of e-cigarettes used by sick people.
Experts say they now believe that a combination of the vitamin derivative and THC is a ‘strong culprit’, but they can’t rule out other chemicals.
The CDC has not changed its warning against using these vaping products and continues to urge Americans who don’t use e-cigarettes not to start.
Although the agency says that smokers who have switched to vaping should not return to using combustible cigarettes, the CDC also advises vaping products should ‘never be used by youths, young adults or women who are pregnant.’
