Teenager Has Lung Removed After Vaping ‘Four Disposables A Week’ For Three Years

ByMF Jones

A teenager who became addicted to vapes and went through ‘four disposables a week’ woke up to his lung collapsing and ended up having to have a section of his organ removed.

LeeRay King, 17, was just 14 years old when he picked up his first vape and confessed to vaping ‘all day, every day’ since.

Doctors eventually had to remove some of LeeRay’s lung –  and even gave him a bag containing parts of his own blackened, scarred and shrivelled organ to remind him of what he’d put his body through:

LeeRay now says he’ll ‘never touch a vape again.’

It was August 2024 when LeeRay, from Wellington, New Zealand, woke up in the middle of the night, struggling to breathe and with excruciating pain on his left side.

His mum Kylee woke up to ‘hundreds of missed calls’ from her son: ‘I decided to take him to hospital and he keeled over in the front seat of the car and burst into tears in excruciating pain.’

At the hospital, doctors ran a number of different scans and found that LeeRay had a very large pneumothorax. In other words: his left lung had collapsed.

Over the next four months, LeeRay’s lung collapsed a further four times, to the point where doctors eventually performed a pleurodesis — a procedure that seals the space between the lung and the chest wall to prevent air or fluid from building up.

However, this still wasn’t enough to keep LeeRay’s lung from collapsing. So, LeeRay then underwent a pleurectomy; a procedure to remove a lining of the chest wall.

PIC FROM Kennedy News and Media (PIC SHOWS: KYLEE JOPE, 50, WITH SON LEERAY KING, 17) This shocking photo shows the blackened parts that doctors had to CUT OUT from a teenager's LUNG - after vaping for only three years. LeeRay King, who lives near Wellington, New Zealand, began using disposable vapes from the age of 14, soon developing a secret habit that he hid from family members for more than a year. At the height of his addiction, the now 17-year-old was getting through four disposable vapes in one week - using e-cigarettes 'all day every day'. DISCLAIMER: While Kennedy News and Media uses its best endeavours to establish the copyright and authenticity of all pictures supplied, it accepts no liability for any damage, loss or legal action caused by the use of images supplied and the publication of images is solely at your discretion. SEE KENNEDY NEWS COPY - 0161 697 4266

That didn’t work either, and so doctors had no choice but to removed a damaged chunk of his lung — the lad’s third time under the knife.

LeeRay’s mum says: ‘I never realised vapes could do this. They advertise it to help give up smoking. You’re pretty much intentionally drowning your insides.’

LeeRay was also shocked: ‘It made me realise I had fully damaged my lung. It was because of vaping and how much I was doing it a day.’

LeeRay is now warning other kids about the dangers of vaping: ‘I actually went and talked to one of the primary schools near where I live. I don’t want them going through what I went through.’

‘It was a pain that no one at a young age should be going through. I would tell anyone don’t do it.’

Crazy stuff. Obviously we shouldn’t be inhaling anything that isn’t oxygen into our lungs, but at least with cigarettes the dangers are well-known and we know exactly the risks we’re taking in exchange for that sweet hit of nicotine. Vapes, on the other hand, are a relatively new phenomenon and so there’s bound to be plenty more cases of what LeeRay went through before they’ve been around long enough for professionals to fully understand the potential consequences.

Then again, it’s one thing to be a casual vaper and quite another to go through four disposables a week, every week. That’s asking for trouble no matter how young and healthy you think you are.

For the man who died after his vape pen exploded in his face, click HERE.

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