My lung ‘spontaneously collapsed’ vaping, I could have died

And just like that, life as she knew it went up in smoke.

A 23-year-old woman has issued a startling warning against vaping after being rushed to the hospital with a collapsed lung.

Grace Brassel, who detailed her terrifying story on TikTok, woke up one morning with rib pain while coughing up blood. Upon getting an X-ray, her doctor “freaked out” after seeing one of Brassel’s lungs had collapsed.

Treatment, she continued, involved shoving “a massive tube” into her lungs to “suck fluid out,” which she described as the “most excruciating pain” she’s ever endured.

In the clip taken in her hospital bed, she explains how the health emergency “could have killed” her.

Now, her warning — “Please stop vaping” — has garnered more than 4 million views.

“This didn’t happen directly bc of vaping but the vaping could have killed me,” she noted in the comments.

While she might have thought she was out of the woods post-hospital visit, a recent clip from Wednesday night showed Brassel back in the hospital after her lung collapsed for a second time.

She posted an update on her Instagram story following surgery, saying she’s now on bed rest with a tube in her lung and that it’s “super painful.”

A collapsed lung, also called a pneumothorax, occurs when “air leaks into the space between your lung and chest wall,” per the Mayo Clinic, which then pushes on your lung. While it could be caused by a chest injury, medical procedures or lung disease, sometimes it has no explicit cause.

Brassel’s devout followers, of which she touts more than 420,900 on TikTok, were quick to post well wishes in the comments section beneath her video.

“That’s so scary!!! Glad you were able to see a Dr and get a diagnosis. Hope you feel better soon,” wrote one user.

“Ugh feel better bb,” commented model and influencer Remi Bader.

“New fear unlocked,” said another.

“It’s wild to me, smoking was finally becoming ‘uncool’ and then they hit the gen Z with vaping,” noted someone else.

Unfortunately, Brassel’s situation isn’t isolated. Young teens and adults around the country have reportedly been hospitalized due to excessive vaping habits.

Earlier this year, an 18-year-old was placed on life support after waking up with cold-like symptoms. In reality, she was enduring lung damage and pneumonia related to vaping for four years. Even back in 2019, multiple cases of teens hospitalized, placed on oxygen or worse, were documented and they all had one pastime in common: vaping.

Vaping has also been linked to high blood sugar, diabetes and even an increased risk of eating disorders among college students.

According to Johns Hopkins, not only are vaping products just as addictive as traditional cigarettes, but they’re not safe either. The user might be exposed to less toxic chemicals than a cigarette, but the long-term effects of vape chemicals are undetermined, as more serious cases of health complications emerge.

“You’re exposing yourself to all kinds of chemicals that we don’t yet understand and that are probably not safe,” revealed Michael Blaha, M.D., M.P.H., the director of clinical research at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease.

“What I find most concerning about the rise of vaping is that people who would’ve never smoked otherwise, especially youth, are taking up the habit,” he continued. “It’s one thing if you convert from cigarette smoking to vaping. It’s quite another thing to start up nicotine use with vaping.”

While there have been efforts to ban or limit the selling and usage of e-cigarettes, the Food and Drug Administration temporarily suspended the most recent ban on Juuls.