A 22-year-old Fargo, North Dakota man received a double lung transplant Jan. 1 following years of heavy vaping.
Jackson Allard is recovering from surgery at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, according to Valley News Live. He has been hospitalized in severe condition since Oct. 18, 2023, when he initially visited the doctor due to stomach pain, according to the outlet.
“At one point a doctor said he had a one percent chance of living and we said, ‘He’s fighting, he’s fought for how many weeks. We’re going to give him a chance to fight, we’re not going to stop any procedures or anything,'” Allard’s grandmother, Doreen Hurlburt, told the outlet.
22-year-old gets double lung transplant after hospitalization resulted from years of heavy vaping https://t.co/bcgkgfRb0S pic.twitter.com/cnf69rc9rT
— New York Post (@nypost) January 21, 2024
Doctors discovered Allard’s oxygen levels were low at the initial visit, for which they diagnosed him with influenza and double pneumonia, Wahpeton Daily News reported. The young man was on life support in November 2023 after his condition failed to improve after being intubated, according to the outlet.
Allard was addicted to vaping, according to the outlet. The popular e-cigarettes are unsafe for kids, teens and young adults because they contain nicotine, which can damage developing brains, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (RELATED: Woman Issues Warning After She Says Her Lung ‘Spontaneously’ Collapsed, Coughed Up Blood)
“You have to stop vaping, and we kept telling him that over and over and over again, and he was a heavy vaper. He vaped all the time, but he said, ‘It’s better than cigarettes.’ Well, they said, ‘With cigarettes, in 50 years you’ll have lung cancer; in five years, if you vape, they will see you with permanent lung damage,'” Doreen said.
Doreen lamented that her grandson’s life “will be totally different” because of the damage caused by vaping, Valley News Live reported.
“He said, he just wants to make sure other people don’t do what he did: vape, and end up having to go through what he went through,” Doreen said.