It started with brown mucus, then blood, and eventually a diagnosis that changed her life

A 22-year-old woman has been diagnosed with lung cancer and told she has 18 months to live after starting to vape when she was just 15 years old.

Kayley Boda, from Manchester, had been using around one 600-puff vape each week when she began coughing up a brown substance with what she described as “grainy bits” in January last year.

She went to doctors eight times and said she was repeatedly sent away after being told it was a chest infection. It was only when she started coughing up blood that the situation was taken more seriously.

After seven biopsies, Kayley was diagnosed with lung cancer. Since then, she has undergone surgery to remove the lower lobe of her right lung and has also been through chemotherapy.

In February 2026, she was told she was all clear, which gave her and her family a brief period of relief. Not long after that, though, she started suffering what she described as serious chest pain.

Two months later, she was told the cancer had returned in the pleural lining and that she had less than two years to live. She was also told the case was extremely rare and was the kind of thing doctors usually see in patients around 80 years old.

22-year-old Kayley started coughing up brown mucus in January 2025, doctors told her not to worry but in August she was diagnosed with cancer

Her family has now launched a GoFundMe campaign to help raise money for a clinical trial in Germany that could help extend her life.

At the same time, the 22-year-old has been speaking openly about her experience in the hope that it might make others think twice about vaping and the possible damage it can cause.

Kayley explained: “A few months after I switched from reusable vapes to disposable ones, I started coughing up brown, grainy mucus,”

“Doctors turned me away eight times with a chest infection. Then I started coughing up blood, so they did an x-ray and found a shadow on my lung. They told me they were 99 percent sure with me being so young that it wasn’t cancer, so not to worry about it.”

“When I got the results back and they told me it was lung cancer, it felt so surreal. Before the diagnosis, I was very naïve and thought that something like this would never happen to me.”

Doctors told her they could not say for certain what caused the cancer, but they also made clear that smoking and vaping would not have helped her situation.

Given the all clear in February 2026, Kayley has since been told her cancer has returned and she has 18 months to live

Kayley said being told she was all clear felt amazing, especially after everything she had already been through. But only two months later, she was facing another devastating conversation after learning that the cancer had come back.

She believes vaping is the reason she became ill, especially because her symptoms began a few months after she switched from reusable devices to disposable ones, and because there is no known history of lung cancer in her family.

She said: “I haven’t vaped for three months, I’ve made my partner stop, I’ve made my mum stop, I’m urging all my friends to stop.”

“Stay off the vapes, because they will catch up with you.”

Back in November 2024, she had been treated for shingles, chickenpox, and scabies after developing a rash across her body, but she said nothing seemed to work. When she later started coughing up brown mucus, she brushed it aside because she had been vaping heavily.

When the mucus turned into blood in March 2025, doctors finally sent her for an X-ray and told her not to worry. Then, in August that year, she was told she had stage one lung cancer.

During surgery to remove part of her lung, doctors found cancer in six lymph nodes, which meant the illness was reclassified from stage one to stage three.

After the operation, Kayley had to learn how to walk again and struggled to breathe properly, showing just how severe the physical toll of the treatment had been.

Her family’s GoFundMe remains active as they try to raise enough money to get her access to the clinical trial in Germany.