AVON, Ind. (WTHR) - An Avon teenager came dangerously close to being the sixth person in Indiana to die from a vaping related illness.
17-year-old Tyler Ware and his mother are speaking out about a dangerous fad too many teens belive won't hurt them.
“I remember not being able to breathe and being told I needed to be on life support,” Tyler Ware said. “I was scared, but mostly for my mother.”
Stacie Ware, was at Tyler’s side as he lay unconscious, connected to a breathing machine for almost a week.
“It breaks my heart every day sitting in that hospital room. But we got through it,” Stacie said. He is going to be ok. We learned a lesson.”
It is a lesson about the life threatening consequences of vaping, mother and son are determined to share with parents and kids.
“I don’t think kids think about how dangerous it can be,” Stacie explained. “I think it is not going to happen to me. And parents are the same way and a lot of parents aren’t aware their kids are doing it," Stacie added.
Stacie admitted she had no clue her healthy, fun loving, baseball playing high school junior started vaping two-years ago.
“A friend had it. He was like do you want to try it. I was hesitant,” Tyler said. “I knew everybody was doing it, so I said ok."
Tyler said he had been vaping every day before he arrived at the Peyton Manning Children’s hospital with double pneumonia
“Massive destruction to the fabrics of the lungs basically,” Dr. Nizar Kheralla explained. “There is so much fluid and junk in infection in the lungs.”
Tyler had no idea that similar lung injuries caused by vaping have already killed five Hoosiers.
“No, no nowhere near that,” Tyler said. "I didn’t know that vaping has killed anybody."
Tyler is out of the hospital and heathy enough for physical therapy and school.
The 17-year- old wants his brush with death to be a lesson to other kids caught up in the vaping epidemic.
“Everybody may be doing it. It’s a cool thing to do,” he said.
“But at the end of the day your health and family are more important," Tyler concluded.