ZCZC
BFF-21
US-HEALTH-VAPING,INTERVIEW
22 years old and on the brink of death from vaping
WASHINGTON, Nov 23, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – With a raging fever, vomiting and
diarrhea, Gregory Rodriguez thought he had some kind of bug when he checked
himself into the emergency room at a New York hospital in September.
Two days later, he was unconscious, hooked up to an artificial lung and a
candidate for a double lung transplant.
“I didn’t think that vaping had (anything) to do with getting sick,” the
22-year-old computer science student told AFP, two months after the ordeal
that brought him to the brink of death in just a few hours.
Doctors have attributed it to his constant e-cigarette use.
But emergency physicians in Jamaica — Rodriguez’s Queens neighborhood —
did not immediately make the connection with vaping. As was often the case at
the start of the vaping epidemic, discovered over the summer, doctors
initially sent Gregory home with antibiotics, thinking he only had an
infection.
But then Rodriguez returned to the hospital, unable to breathe, and
admitted to vaping cannabis for the past two years.
“At first, I was hesitant to let them know that I vape, because
unfortunately THC is still illegal in the state of New York,” he said.
On September 18, his body quickly broke down. He was hooked up to a
ventilator, but it wasn’t enough.
His lungs were filled with a viscous substance, like custard, due to
extreme inflammation of his respiratory airways. Oxygen could no longer enter
his bloodstream.
“He was within hours of dying,” said Dr. Mangala Narasimhan, the regional
director of critical care medicine at Northwell Health, who treated him.
As a last resort, doctors hooked Rodriguez up to an ECMO (extracorporeal
membrane oxygenation) machine: the machine pumps blood out of a patient’s
body to oxygenate it, and then reinjects it into the veins.
Rodriguez was placed in an induced coma for three days to ensure he
wouldn’t suffer during the procedure.
“When I woke up, I did have a tube inside of my mouth that goes into my
lungs,” Rodriguez said. His mother showed him photos from when he was
unconscious.
His lungs were able to recover while the machine stood in for them. The
procedure saved him, and he didn’t need a lung transplant.
He returned home after only 12 days in the hospital, a relatively short
time compared to patients with similar cases.
His situation, however, was still one of the more severe. At the Long
Island Jewish Medical Center, five out of 40 patients were as serious as
Gregory.
There have been 47 vaping-related deaths in the United States this year,
and 2,290 cases of vaping-related sickness worldwide.
Authorities blame vitamin E acetate, one of the additives in THC vaping
fluid, for the illnesses.
– The marijuana loophole –
“The first few days were very, very hard. Just walking, just going upstairs
was very, very hard,” said Rodriguez, who stayed at his family’s apartment
after getting discharged.
Two months later, he’s no longer breathless all the time. But his pulmonary
capacity has been reduced to 60 percent, according to his doctor.
“Physically I feel normal. It’s just mentally, it’s going to take a while
to recover,” said Rodriguez, who is now craving marijuana.
“I don’t want to call it an addiction, but there are days when I just think
about it,” he said.
His habit cost him $16 per cartridge of THC, the psychoactive component of
cannabis. He bought the cartridges — or carts — in packs of 25, paying the
sketchy, dark web vendors in Bitcoin.
It’s a complicated method (instructions are listed on Reddit), but it’s
significantly cheaper than the $40 per cartridge that New York dealers
charge.
“It’s basically Amazon, but for drugs,” Rodriguez explained.
Last summer, suffering from depression, he began smoking more, almost an
entire cartridge every two days.
“The problem with THC is, since it’s illegal, you have to resort to the
black market,” the young man said.
“If it was legal, it’d be a lot safer, because you could just buy it in an
official government dispensary,” he added. His opinion is not necessarily
accurate, since marijuana is heavily taxed and more expensive in states where
it has been legalized than on the black market.
Rodriguez nevertheless pinpointed a contradiction in American marijuana
regulation: federal authorities are debating a ban on flavored electronic
cigarettes, to prevent young people from vaping.
But since the substance is federally outlawed, authorities can’t regulate
or control cannabis-based e-cigarette liquids that are permitted at the state
level.
Banning just flavored e-cigarette products “would not change anything,”
said Gregory.
“These THC carts are killing people.”
BSS/AFP/ARS/1300 hrs