npr:

Piper Johnson was all packed and ready to drive across country with her mom to start college when the 18-year-old noticed a pain in her chest. She took an Advil and hoped the pain would go away.

It didn’t. During the drive from her hometown of New Lenox, Ill., near Chicago, to the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colo., she realized something was very wrong. “I kept feeling worse and worse,” Johnson says. She developed a high fever, felt extremely lethargic, and noticed a rapid heart beat.

In Greeley, she went to the emergency room. Doctors gave her steroids and antibiotics. They did an X-ray and detected fluid in her lungs, she recalls. They told her that she had a type of pneumonia.

When her oxygen levels dropped, she was moved to the ICU. “I was terrified,” Johnson recalls. “I was laying in my bed sobbing because it hurt so bad to breathe,” she says. She stayed in the hospital seven days.

Piper Johnson is one of the more than 1,000 people diagnosed with vaping-related lung disease this year. The first cases were reported this spring, and the outbreak continues to grow.

Johnson has now joined a group of young activists who are working to raise awareness of the risks of vaping, and to pressure the industry and the government to do more to keep kids safe.

Johnson and dozens of other young people demonstrated outside Juul’s office in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, as part of a day of action organized by the non-profit group, Truth Initiative. Similar rallies took place around the country.

She Survived The ICU. Now, She Has A Message: Quit Vaping!

Photo: Catie Dull/NPR