Vaper left fighting for his life
1% chance to survive with new lungs
A North Dakota man was given a 1% chance of survival after being put on life support while in need of a double lung transplant as his oxygen levels dropped after years of heavy vaping.
Jackson Allard, 22, went to a clinic in October after complaining about stomach aches and was admitted because of low oxygen levels, where he was diagnosed with influenza and double pneumonia, while his condition worsened, and was subsequently transferred to the University of Minnesota, according to a GoFundMe page.
“A doctor said he had a 1% chance of living, and we said, ‘He’s fighting,’” Allard’s grandmother Doreen Hurlburt told Valley News Live.
Deadly habit
After being admitted into the hospital, Allard’s condition declined so dramatically that doctors decided to put the Fargo native on life support to rest his body, according to the Wahpeton Daily News.
Hurlburt says her grandson’s terrible habit of vaping caused his symptoms, which at one point got so bad during his three-month hospital stay that his heart stopped beating, leading to doctors giving a poor prognosis.
“He’s fought for how many weeks — we’re going to give him a chance to fight,” she said. “We’re not going to stop any procedures or anything.”
Hurlburt says she told Allard, “You have to stop vaping,” as experts had earlier deemed it to be in some regards worse than traditional smoking methods.
“And we kept telling him that over and over and over again, and he was a heavy vaper. He vaped all the time,” Hurlburt said.
But Allard — who was described as “friendly, outgoing, energetic and fun” — responded: “It’s better than cigarettes.”
His grandmother countered his argument: “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.”
The Food and Drug Administration other health experts agree that electronic cigarettes are far less dangerous than traditional ones, but some are calling for a surgeon general’s report that could help clear up the haze surrounding the health risks of the modern smoking trend.
“There have been so many confusing messages about vaping,” Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University, told The Associated Press last week. “A surgeon general’s report could clear that all up.”
Sitting by Allard’s hospital bed, Hurlburt feared she would lose her grandson.
Forever changed
“I thought for sure we were going to lose him. I thought for sure he’s not going to survive this, but in my mind I kept picturing him coming home,” she told KVLY-TV.
A double lung transplant on Jan. 1 saved Allard’s life, but it will be forever changed in both the short and long term.
The former vaper and his mother will have to stay in Minnesota for the next six months for his regular checkups. Allard can also never smoke or drink again and will eventually need another transplant later in life.
In a similarly heartbreaking scenario, doctors used breast implants to save a Missouri man who needed a double lung transplant when his organs began to shut down after a decade of heavy vaping. Davey Bauer was saved last May after going into cardiac arrest, with doctors’ only option being to remove the damaged lungs and place breast implants into his chest cavity to keep his heart from shifting out of place.