Britt Jones
A man who vaped for nearly ten years has issued a warning to others after ending up hospitalised.
Raymond Dehn had been vaping since he was 15, after being able to buy disposables from a local store that didn’t check his ID.
Now 24, he continued his habit and then began using cannabis THC pens.
On September 13, the Buffalo native was vaping in his car before he and his girlfriend went into the mall to grab some food after work.
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It was there that he suddenly felt a ‘searing pain’ between his shoulder blades and collapsed.
He said: "I remember taking a hit on my vape and my THC pen in the car and coughing, which isn't abnormal. But then this searing pain hit both my shoulder blades and would just not go away.
"I tried to power through, and we started to walk back to the mall, but the pain grew so rapidly. I was holding in screams. About a minute later, while walking in the mall, I passed out.”
An ambulance rushed him to hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with a spontaneous pneumothorax.
He was given an x-ray, which is when they discovered that his lung had collapsed.
He said: "I was honestly so shocked. It was so scary to think I suddenly had a broken lung, especially being so young and healthy.”
While he noted the doctor ‘wasn't able to provide a specific cause’ of the collapse, he did say that she explained she'd seen ‘three or four young people’ come into the hospital over the past six months with the same issue.
He said: "The only common denominator between all of us was that we vaped."
For Raymond, he said it was ‘a terrifying and extremely painful experience’ and he’s warning others about the dangers of vapes.
Calling himself a ‘healthy young man’, he said the only reason he can think of that this happened was because of his vaping habit.
As soon as he was released from hospital, he stopped vaping, and also ‘implore other young people to do the same'.
As a teen, he wasn’t a really a smoker, but said kids probably gravitate toward vaping as it’s ‘so convenient and leaves very little trace’ that they’d been smoking.
Having spent four nights in the hospital with a tube inserted into his chest to slowly reinflate his lung, he said it was a ‘wake up call’ and now he’s constantly fearful of it happening again.
Raymond said: “Every few minutes I get this overwhelming fear it’ll happen again. The whole experience is sticking with me in a really big way. It's why I want to advocate so strongly for other young people to be aware.”
Now, he’s using alternative sources to get his fix, but will not touch a vape again.
He said he’s been using pouches, admitting: "I've been using ZYN nicotine pouches ever since and have switched to edibles for whenever I want some THC. I'm taking this as my wake up call and taking it seriously."