Vaping at 14...ICU by 22

Max Alonzo first started vaping at 14 years old. “Going into freshman year of high school was when all the kids were like, oh, it's cool, it's cool. It's fun. Like just try. Oh, it's it just it helps you out. It makes you chill. It's like it relaxes you,” he recalled.

After years of vaping, one day he experienced severe pain in his lungs, cough, fever, and vomiting. He went to the emergency department and was admitted. 3 days later, "I started not being able to breathe. I was just...like I couldn't breathe at all. And then I started looking down at my fingertips, and my fingertips are like purple. They're like turning blue, purplish. I'm just freaking out. I'm thinking just like, I'm going to go.”

He was rushed to the ICU. His lungs were filled with fluid. He went into a coma to have them pumped. “You know, it's definitely scary looking back at those photos, knowing where I could have been gone,” said Alonzo.

Doctors determined the 22-year-old had acute hypoxic respiratory failure. Fortunately, he was able to recover. Now he wants to spread the word to discourage other young people from going what he went through. “One day you're not going to be able to breathe on your own. One day you could end up with COPD because of it. One day it could just affect your whole life,” said Alonzo. “I feel a lot calmer, a lot more collected since I quit.” You can learn more by searching for pulmonology on leehealth.org.


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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries.

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