Brogan's story: Vaping almost killed me

[0:09]It's important to tell my story well because vaping almost killed me. Brogan's my middle child. He's 19 years old. Brogan's a very kind, giving person. I like to bowl, I like to hunt, dirt bike. I like to play piano. I like spending time with family. When I started vaping, I I want to say I was 13. Everybody around me did it. Friends, family, I was doing it constantly. So the day started like any other day. I called Brogan to see what he was doing and he was had gotten off work and walked down to the river to go fishing with his cousin and a friend of theirs. Mom called me and said, hey, I'm over at grandma's. Do you want to meet me there? I was like, yep, no problem. My buddy was like, all right, I'll see you later. I was like, well, let me hit your vape before I go. I hit it and I was like, all right, see you later. Me and my cousin went to my grandma's house. Brogan sat on the couch with us. He started looking up at the ceiling fan and kind of pointing at it. And I looked over at him and I was like, what are you doing, Brogan? And he laid down behind me. I said, quit messing around. What are you doing? And that's when he started having a full-on grandma seizure. His eyes rolled up in his head. His body locked up, head to toe. It's terrifying. You feel so helpless as a parent. Thank goodness my husband was there. He is a fireman, he's dealt with this. He ran in the room and he laid Brogan on the floor and was rubbing his back and I just remember it sounded like he was gasping to breathe and his eyes were still rolled up in his head and his whole body was just shaking. Every muscle in his body was contracting. In that moment, I thought this is it. I'm going to lose my child. My worst nightmare. I called 911 and I ran outside to wait for the ambulance to get there. In 2019, the FDA released a statement notifying the public of a recent uptick in seizures that appears to be linked to vaping, mostly among teens and young adults. When the paramedics got there and I took them in the house where Brogan was, he had started to come to. And one of the questions the paramedics asked was, did you ingest anything? Did you take anything? Did you eat anything? Did you drink anything? Anything out of the ordinary? And he's like, no. Um, my nephew is standing there and I looked at him and I said, did you guys do anything that would cause this? And he said, we hit a vape. So when we were in the hospital, I told the doctor that he had hit a vape maybe 30 minutes, 45 minutes before the seizure hit. The emergency doctor did say that in all likelihood, vaping did trigger the seizure. Nicotine poisoning probably is what caused it. However, vapes have not been out long enough to do studies to prove that seizures can be caused by vaping. When the doctor said that it was more than likely caused by vaping, I just thought to myself, there's no way because I've been doing it for how long. When it happened sooner, there's not enough research to prove that that's what caused his seizure. So to a teenage boy, they're not going to believe that vaping caused the seizure, because they want to vape. My relationship with my mom after my first seizure changed. I pulled him out of public school. Made him home school. She was very strict. I isolated him from all of his friends. She was searching through my stuff. I actually bought nicotine tests to start testing him at home. She would not let me hang out with my friends. Rarely left the house. However, he did have a cousin stay the night. He brought a vape with him. We vaped all night. His cousin come running in our bedroom and said, something's wrong with Brogan. And I ended up having a seizure that night. Me and my husband got up and ran in his room and I looked right at his cousin as Brogan is laying there having a grandma seizure. I looked at his cousin and I said, did he vape today? And he just stared at me and I said, I need to know. And he said, yes, he did. That night, it was clear to me that vaping caused my seizure because what else would have caused it on that particular night? After that second seizure, I I was done. I didn't even touch a vape after that. I think what finally made Brogan quit is fear. The fear of having a seizure and not coming out of it. Even after I quit vaping, there still was times when I was like 4:00 in the morning and I'm just like, what if I don't wake up tomorrow? It's been really hard, um, mostly for him. He's lost all his independence. He now has a huge medical debt. He's diagnosed with a seizure disorder. That will follow him the rest of his life. If I had never vaped, my life would be so different. I wouldn't have had to sell my dirt bike. I wouldn't have had to lose my job or my license and I would have never had to start taking pills every day for seizure medication. A big problem is once parents find out their kids are vaping, it's almost too late. They're already hooked. Parents need to wake up. They need to realize that this is real and this is a problem and it's getting worse. I want people to understand, you got one life, live it, smart. Don't be dumb. Don't do what I did. Don't just don't risk it.