A woman has spoken out about being unable to lie down without risking being suffocated after taking up vaping for just over a year to try and help quit smoking cigarettes.
Loyda Cordero Faliero, a mom-of-two from Franklinville, New York, smoked cigarettes for around 20 years but decided to quit.
To help ease herself off the cigarettes, the 39-year-old took up vaping around 18 months ago in the belief it was also 'the healthier option'.
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However, in March earlier this year, only having vaped for 'little over a year,' Loyda was rushed to the emergency department after she began choking on a drink and experiencing breathlessness, nausea, dizziness and pain.
At hospital, Loyda was told her oesophagus had 'closed-up' and she was diagnosed with pulmonary bullae - a build up of large air spaces - in her lungs alongside a collapsed lung.
Loyda explained the doctor said the cause of her condition was a build up of fluids from her vaping.
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"My oesophagus is out of place to where the pulmonary bullae sac is putting pressure onto that and if that ruptures, it could cause a bleed on the brain or internal bleeding which could kill me instantly," she said.
"It's causing a lot of problems. If I lay down when sleeping instead of sitting up I can choke to death on my own spit or I can suffocate and die."
She was informed if she lay down, she could choke to death and so would have to sleep sat up, avoid physical activity and ultimately, quit vaping, to be able to receive life-saving surgery or risk the spaces 'kill[ing] her at any moment' should they rupture.
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The mom noted it was 'pretty much a life or death situation' and made her 'very emotional' given she'd 'quit something thinking that it was going to be healthier but unfortunately it destroyed [her] more than it benefited [her]'.
"I was so proud of myself for quitting cigarettes," she reflected.
Desperate to still be a mom to her two grown up kids, alongside being around for grandkids, the mom may've been left on her 'deathbed' and waiting for a 'ticking time bomb' to 'go off,' but she resolved to quit vaping.
"The doctors said that if I carried on vaping then within the next five years I would end up on life support and I wouldn't make it because of how badly this damaged my lungs and how badly the liquid has built up in my lungs," she recalled.
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Loyda underwent surgery to have the sacs removed on April 30.
Thankfully, with the procedure having gone successfully, she's now recovering in hospital.
She's now speaking out in a bid to warn others who are looking at using vapes as a way to help quit smoking cigarettes.
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Loyda warned: "With a cigarette, you can put it out and do what you've got to do but with a vape it's like a cell phone - it's literally stuck in your hand 24/7 and you're hitting it even when you don't want to hit it just because it's there.
"It's horrible. Vaping is 100 percent more dangerous than cigarettes."
Poppy Bilderbeck