Hospitalized man’s family warns of vaping dangers
Two dozen similar cases reported across Midwest
Andrea Nelson got the call in the middle of the night. Her brother, Dylan Nelson, needed a ride to the ER. The 26year-old Burlington man was having trouble breathing. Serious trouble.
Doctors at Aurora Memorial Hospital of Burlington quickly admitted him into the ICU.
He was struggling hard to talk and profusely dripping sweat.
“You could see his chest rising and falling,” she said. “He’d say a word and it would rise and fall. Every breath looked like a real struggle.”
Nothing seemed to help. “Everything they were doing for his breathing was not working,” she said.
Doctors soon put Dylan in a medically induced coma and hooked him up to a ventilator. His lungs and heart needed help, they told Andrea and other family members at his side.
Dylan had had asthma since he was a boy. This was no asthma attack.
Doctors suspect something he vaped may have caused a severe reaction.
Dylan told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he had been vaping nicotine and also from a cartridge filled with THC oil. He would not say how well he knew the person who sold him the THC cartridge. He and family members said they suspected the cartridge — called
Rose Gold from Dank Vapes — had been adulterated.
Dylan is among approximately two dozen young people in the Midwest to be admitted to hospitals in recent weeks with severe lung injuries doctors suspect are linked to vaping. All the teens and young adults have reported vaping nicotine or THC, or both, for weeks or months before becoming ill.
Health officials in Wisconsin have confirmed 12 cases and were investigating 13 more. Officials in Illinois have confirmed six cases. And earlier this week, state health officials in Minnesota announced that four teens — between 16 and 18 — from that state had been hospitalized after vaping nicotine or THC.
The state health departments are working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine what, specifically, may be causing the injuries.
“The suspected cause of these hospitalizations continues to be vaping,” Mike Gutzeit, chief medical officer at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, said in a statement. “As we continue to see teens come into our hospital, we want to warn others about the potential danger of vaping for those who are underage and encourage conversation between parents and their children.”
Certain chemicals used to flavor e-liquids have been known to cause major lung injuries. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation in 2015 found the chemicals, diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione, could be found in vape juice even when companies advertised their products were diacetyl-free.
Fake products
Aside from the possibility that flavoring chemicals could be causing illnesses, those who study the cannabis market say counterfeit THCbased products are prevalent in states where marijuana is illegal.
Brand-name packaging and empty cartridges are readily available online and fake products are flooding underground markets in prohibition states, according to David Bienenstock, contributor to the website Leafly and co-host of the podcast “Great Moments in Weed History.”
“Existence of these counterfeits is a factor of prohibition,” Bienenstock said. “In prohibition states, you have these unregulated products floating around and higher use by youth because of the robust underground market.”
Vaping THC cartridges has become popular among teens as it doesn’t have a strong odor and can be inhaled discreetly.
Kim Barnes, Dylan Nelson’s mother, urged other families to come forward if their loved ones have suffered similar injuries to prevent more people from getting sick.
“I don’t want somebody else’s son to end up like this,” she said. “That’s why when they told me I just thought, ‘Well, why isn’t anybody saying anything about this?’ ”
She said his brother was afraid Dylan was going to die alone in his hospital room.
“We weren’t even sure he was coming back out of the hospital,” her husband, John Barnes, said.
Dylan was still badly shaken from the experience when interviewed by the Journal Sentinel. He struggled to speak and breathe.
He lost his job at the factory where he had been working before becoming sick and continues to be “awfully tired,” his mom said.
Asked what he wanted people to know, Dylan quietly said, “Don’t do drugs, period.”