A young Virginia male nurse claims he escaped death after a habit of smoking a capsule a day caused a collapsed lung.
Jonathan Belcher, 22, woke up one morning at his home in Covington, Virginia, with excruciating pain behind his left shoulder that was getting worse with every breath he took.
Terrified, Belcher was wheeled to the hospital’s emergency room, where it was discovered that his lung had collapsed, a byproduct of the lung trauma that resulted in an air leak into the cavity surrounding the lung.
Doctors managed to insert a chest tube to evacuate the air, but saw a hole in the lung that needed to be plugged.
Belcher claims doctors traced the injury to e-cigarettes, which addicted millions of Americans to nicotine.
Jonathan Belcher, 22, started vaping a nicotine e-cigarette at the age of 17. He vaped the equivalent of 20 cigarettes (about a Juul capsule) a day.
Belcher said the short drive to the hospital was terrifying, and when he got there, doctors told him to “call your mom, your lungs have collapsed and it’s really bad.”
Jonathan said, “It felt like my shoulder was a balloon about to burst.” I was really short of breath and every breath I took made the pain in my shoulder worse, but I didn’t know why.
Having had part of his lung surgically removed and being emotionally traumatized from his death encounter, Mr Belcher has vowed to stay away from the highly potent e-cigarette that caused his condition.
He said recently after the ordeal in April, “The whole experience was terrifying, painful and so bad I will never touch a device that produces smoke again… I really looked death in the face.”
“I fully understand that it is very difficult to quit and ultimately addictive.”
“But after the pain I endured, the trauma it caused and the problems it has caused in my life since then, the best advice I can give for trying to quit smoking is to believe that this will happen to you.”
He had been vaping since he was 17 and typically ingested the same amount of nicotine as 20 cigarettes.
For reference, a single Juul capsule contains 20 cigarettes’ worth of nicotine, although it’s not clear which brand Belcher used.
The pain that morning woke Mr Belcher, who said it “felt like my shoulder was a balloon about to burst”.
He later learned that the pain was caused by a collapsed lung, or pneumothorax, which caused air to leak from the lungs into the surrounding cavity, the pleural space.
The air in the pleural space increased the pressure on the lungs, preventing them from expanding as much as they normally would with normal breathing.
Mr Belcher said: “The moment they said, ‘You can call your mum, your lungs have collapsed and it’s really bad,’ I just burst into tears.
“I will never forget calling my mother and how she screamed and cried.”
To fix the leak and relieve pressure on the lungs, doctors inserted a chest tube to deflate the space between the lungs and the chest wall. Usually, the problem will go away on its own as the lungs inflate again.
However, the hole in Mr Belcher’s lungs had to be surgically repaired and part of the organ had to be removed as it had ‘dead’ due to lack of oxygen.
He said, “I told the surgeon that if he was ready for the surgery, then I was ready for the surgery.” I was just in so much pain that I wanted something that could fix it.
Pneumothorax is relatively common and usually survivable. About 20 in 100,000 men and 6 in 100,000 women get it each year, and taller, thinner people are more prone to it.
Typically, a pneumothorax will heal once the air surrounding the lungs is deflated using a chest tube
Doctors had to surgically close the hole that had formed in Mr Belcher’s lungs, which resulted in them having to remove part of the organ that had died due to lack of oxygen
Mr Belcher, who suffers from shortness of breath during everyday activities such as using the phone, has sworn off e-cigarettes
It is usually caused by a ruptured air sac, or a “sac” that pushes air into the space around the lungs. It is believed that chronic vaping can cause bubbles to form in the lungs, while heavy inhalation of an e-cigarette can cause an existing bubble to burst.
The exact physiological effects of vaping e-cigarettes, which contain a potent blend of nicotine, propylene glycol and glycerin, and concentrated flavors, are still being studied.
But claims that vaping is a safer alternative to smoking traditional cigarettes because it removes the cancer-causing tar and smoke from the equation are increasingly being questioned.
Cases like Mr. Belcher’s are not isolated cases. In recent years, there have been countless clinical case studies of vaping-induced pneumothorax.
Vaping has become an acute problem, particularly among young people and those who have never smoked cigarettes – a major setback to vape manufacturers’ purported goal of switching smokers to safer e-cigarettes.
In 2019, 1.97 million non-smokers aged 18 to 29 said they smoked, compared to just 1.37 million current smokers.
But by 2021, the number of young non-smokers who had never smoked had increased by more than a third to 2.68 million.
Jonathan was released on May 9 and claims the trauma of the incident outweighed the pain as he now frequently has trouble sleeping.
Though his lungs are now able to function on their own, Jonathan claims they will be weaker for the rest of his life.
Jonathan said: “The pain wasn’t the worst since I got home, it was actually the trauma.”
“It was affecting my sleep because when I woke up I had a collapsed lung.” Now I have a really hard time staying asleep and waking up with a heavy sweat throughout the night.
“It has gone from being able to do normal things without feeling out of breath to having to sit down to catch your breath after a phone call.”
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