Teen was in the fight for her life after vaping a cartridge a day I Nightline

[0:00]You hid your vape underneath your pillows and you would come and smoke how often? Oh, I couldn't go longer than like 10, 15 minutes without hitting it.It was so addicting.I brought it with me everywhere I went. Sima Herman never expected that what she thought was a harmless habit, vaping, would end up nearly killing her. It took two days for my lungs to fail and I almost died. The 18-year-old going viral with this photo from her hospital bed, a tube still pumping oxygen to her failing lungs. In her hands a call to action. asked for like a pen and paper because that was the only way I could communicate.And I wrote, I want to start a no vaping campaign.That was the first thing I did when I opened my eyes. Sima's story is just the latest in a landslide of incidents linked to vaping, sparking what many officials are calling a national health crisis. What we've seen in the course of the past, let's say month is an increased number of people who are coming in with respiratory problems as a result of vaping. So far, the Centers for Disease Control report more than 450 possible cases in 33 states of lung illness associated with vaping. And six deaths have been confirmed in California, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Oregon and now Kansas. Last Friday, the CDC issued a stark warning, if you are vaping, no matter how old you are, you should consider stopping. Like I didn't think of myself as a smoker.Vaping just makes it seem like it's nothing, like you're doing nothing wrong. Sema was in high school when she started vaping nicotine. I was 16 the first time, 15 even, the first time I bought it at a smoke shop. I went in and I was like, can I get a pack of jewel pods and they were like, how old are you? And I said 22, and they were just like, okay. And it ended up becoming my oxygen.I couldn't live without it.I needed it all the time every day. But because all of my friends were doing it all the time, and no one else had symptoms that I had. I couldn't, like I wouldn't even have imagined that maybe this is killing me. Sema was an active healthy teen.She'd been dancing for years, even making dance team her freshman year of college. But as her vaping habit increased, adding in cannabis, her ability to dance disappeared. She was vaping a cartridge a day. That's like smoking the same amount of nicotine as a pack of cigarettes in one day. Her parents had no idea their daughter had become hopelessly addicted. this healthy dancer, dancing 12 hours a week, stopped dancing because of it, stopped living because of it, stopped going to school and college because of it. Sema says she was feeling sick all the time. Over a year, I lost like 50 pounds without trying. 50 pounds? Yeah. By this summer, Sema had stopped going to her college classes. She says her health issues were getting worse, but no doctor could nail down what was wrong. Did you not tell the doctors that you vape? I actually did. I made sure that every hospital, every ER, every doctor's office I went to, I told them that I smoked. But you never thought, I can't breathe.I feel like I'm going to die. Maybe it's because I'm vaping every 10 to 15 minutes. No doctor ever said, like, maybe you should stop vaping. It all came to a head on August 15th when Sima's dad rushed her to the ER. I said, go fast.Don't let me close my eyes.Don't let me fall asleep, or I won't wake up. Now, why did you say that? Because I knew I was dying. You felt death on you. Yeah.It was terrifying. The worst part was, I couldn't, I couldn't let it like my parents watch it happen to me. But hospital staff couldn't figure out why Sema couldn't breathe. Two days later, doctors had to put her on a ventilator. I was begging them to vent her faster, vent her faster.She's going to die. It was terrifying. It was in that agonizing moment that Sima's cousin revealed her secret addiction. She said, you know she smokes every day. I said, what are you talking about? She said, she smokes every day.She smokes that vape. I said, you tell the doctors right now.You go tell the doctors right now. And I ransacked her room and I found all the vapes. They look like gum wrappers.They look like little candy wrappers.They look like little cute mascara wands. This progression is so fast. Dr. Catherine Melamed is a pulmonologist at UCLA Medical Center.She worked on Sema's case. This was Sema's chest x-ray when she came into our hospital. These hazy white areas here at the base, at the bottom of her lungs. just show that she could have a pneumonia.But what you can then see is if we choose an X-ray from just uh, less than 48 hours later. Whoa.Now her lungs, all of this white haziness here, is inflammation. From just day one to day three is remarkable. Dr. Melamed is on the front lines of what health officials fear is an emerging crisis. The National Youth Tobacco survey found a 78% jump in e-cigarette usage among high school students alone. But any research on the impacts of vaping lags far behind. Part of vaping is heating oil and then inhaling that oil. And that's not something the lung is used to inhaling.And so with that comes an inflammatory reaction that then uh, produces phlegm and sputum and gives the lung sort of that wet cough phlegm property. That sounds terrible and dangerous. Yes. Last month, 17-year-old Trist Zofeld described how he spent 18 days in the hospital fighting for his life after vaping. I woke up just throwing up everywhere.My heart was just pounding on my chest going 100 miles an hour. Tristan lost 15 pounds and said he had to relearn to walk. And just yesterday, a Texas teen had to be rushed to the hospital after vaping at school. He hit it, he passed out and he would not wake up, like he was not waking up. In Wisconsin today, a man was arrested for making thousands of illegal THC vaping cartridges. Don't do it.The state of New York is taking an aggressive approach in an attempt to find answers and crack down on black market products. You shouldn't be vaping uh, products that clearly you don't know what you're you're smoking or or you're vaping. Many vaping products are popular with young adults and teenagers, but no company has taken more heat than Jewel, the industry leader. The company says it's designed to get adult smokers off cigarettes. But just this week, the FDA sent a warning letter to Jewel accusing it of illegally marketing its nicotine vape products as safer than traditional cigarettes without proof. Jewel responded, "We share these concerns about youth vaping." It adds it shut down its Facebook and Instagram accounts and recently began deploying new technology to verify IDs. Is this her? Yeah, that's her. But Sima's mom blames the whole industry for trying to hook kids early. The fact that they market this crap to children and they turn into pink, pretty, purple, packaging candy pisses me off. There's a lot we don't know about the both short-term and long-term consequences of vaping.And so I would just say, don't. In the weeks since Sema has worked to rehab her lungs, she still feels that pull to pick up the vape. Now I don't necessarily crave the nicotine.I don't necessarily crave the weed.It's just craving like the act of smoking. So that's been my hardest thing of like staying away from it. But she hopes that going public with her story can keep her and countless others like her alive. What would you tell somebody who's under 18, who's thinking about vaping and says, I'm just going to try it one time to see what it's like. I would show them my pictures and say, I tried it once too. And then I tried it another time and then another time, it's just remembering that you don't need it.Like it's going to kill you. For Nightline, I'm Adrian Banker in Los Angeles. Hi everyone.George Stephanopoulos here.Thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel. If you'd like to get more video, show highlights and watch live event coverage, click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts.Thanks for watching.