From The New York Times:
An 18-year-old showed up in a Long Island emergency room, gasping for breath, vomiting and dizzy. When a doctor asked if the teenager had been vaping, he said no.
The patient’s older brother, a police officer, was suspicious. He rummaged through the youth’s room and found hidden vials of marijuana for vaping.
“I don’t know where he purchased it. He doesn’t know,” said Dr. Melodi Pirzada, chief pediatric pulmonologist at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, N.Y., who treated the young man. “Luckily, he survived.”
Dr. Pirzada is one of the many physicians across the country treating patients — now totaling more than 215 — with mysterious and life-threatening vaping-related illnesses this summer. The outbreak is “becoming an epidemic,” she said. “Something is very wrong.”
Your Choice Note: Vaping continues to be popular among teens and young adults. Please make sure that you are communicating the dangers of vaping to your children, even if you think that vaping is something that they would never do. Sadly, vaping is more common than we would like to believe and this is a conversation that should not be skipped!
