WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT LeeRay King says he will ‘never touch a vape again’ after a habit he began at just 14 years old left him with a collapsed lung – shocking pictures show the extent of the damage caused
Horrifying new photographs show the blackened lungs of a teen vape addict after just three years of the habit.
LeeRay King began using disposable vapes from the age of 14 – and soon developed an addiction that he hid from family members for more than a year. At the height of his problem, the now 17-year-old was getting through four disposable vapes in one week, using the devices all day every day’. But in August last year, LeeRay woke in the middle of the night to excruciating pain on his left side, and found himself struggling to breathe. Mum Kylee Jope rushed her son to hospital, where scans revealed that LeeRay’s left lung had collapsed.
Over the next four months, LeeRay’s lung collapsed four more times, leading doctors to perform three surgeries in a bid to prevent further collapses. During his third operation, surgeons discovered damaged tissue that they subsequently removed from LeeRay’s lung – which Kylee believes was all due to his years of vaping. A shocking photo shows the chopped out pieces of lung in a sealed plastic packet, brown and shrivelled. The family now plan on burying the piece of LeeRay’s lung in their garden – and now want to educate others of the potential health risks associated with vaping.
LeeRay, who lives near Wellington, New Zealand, said: “I got kind of peer pressured into vaping. I didn’t like it at first but then got hooked on it within the first week. I was heavily vaping from 14 to 16. I went through about four disposables in a week. I would vape all day every day. If I didn’t have one, I’d be like a different person. At first I didn’t realise how bad it was.”
The teen was admitted to hospital after suffering extreme pain in his left side, which tests revealed was caused by a pneumothorax – a condition where air leaks into the space between the lung and the chest wall, causing the lung to collapse.
Kylee, a 50-year-old cleaning supervisor, said: “I woke up in the morning to hundreds of missed calls and messages from LeeRay to say he was struggling to breathe. He said his chest and left side was really sore and it hurts to breathe. “I decided to take him to hospital and he keeled over in the front seat of the car and burst into tears in excruciating pain. We get to the hospital and they did an ECG on him and an x-ray. We were told that he had a very large pneumothorax. I asked what that was and she said his left lung had collapsed and I just burst into tears.” LeeRay’s left lung collapsed four more times over the following four months, leading surgeons to perform a pleurodesis, a procedure that creates a strong adhesion between the lung and the chest wall to prevent the re-accumulation of fluid.
The teen then underwent another procedure to remove a lining of the chest wall – known as a pleurectomy – before undergoing a third surgery in which doctors removed a damaged black chunk of LeeRay’s lung.
Kylee said: “When we picked it up, LeeRay pulled it out and we were both like ‘oh my god’. It was the damaged piece of the lung that they had removed. We’re actually going to bury it at our house as a native tree. We were shocked. I never realised vapes could do this. They advertise it to help give up smoking. You’re pretty much intentionally drowning your insides. Seeing my son go through that was horrifying.” LeeRay is now adamant on spreading awareness of the dangers of vaping , and recently gave a talk at a local primary school. He said: “I don’t want them going through what I went through. It was a pain that no one at a young age should be going through. I would tell anyone don’t do it. I’ll never touch a vape again.”
