电子烟危机(2)

For the next two months Walker tried convincing himself that he could quit anytime. "I thought, 'If I want to give it up, I'll just give it up, ' " he says.

"But by then I was hooked on it just like everyone else." In early March, Walker went to a hospital emergency room near campus complaining of chest pain, fever and vomiting. Doctors told himhe had the flu and prescribed antibiotics and steroids.

Eleven days later "my chest hurt so bad I couldn't even see straight," says Walker, who somehow managed to drive himself the 200 miles from his Boca Raton campus to his parents' home in Orlando.

"I'd never seen anyone so sick in all my life," says his father, Dave, 56, who rushed his son to a nearby urgent-care clinic.

Doctors immediately sent them to a hospital, where X-rays revealed that Walker had what looked like pneumonia in his left lung.

"No one asked me if I vaped," says Walker, who was admitted to the ICU. "They just asked me if I smoked, and I told them I didn't."

Says his dad: "I just kept asking myself, 'How does a healthy kid get this sick? ' "

Within days Walker was put on a respirator and later airlifted to another hospital, where doctors heavily sedated him-then hooked him up to an ECMO machine, which pumps and oxygenates blood outside the body, allowing his lungs and heart to rest.

"He was dying," says his mom, Candy, 49, who works as a critical-care nurse.

It took seven days for doctors to confirm that Walker's infection was caused by the adenovirus-a common strain that's prevalent in college dorms and usually leads to mild illnesses such as coughs, colds and diarrhea.