Kayley Boda has undergone surgery to remove half of her right lung
Credit: SWNS
NEED TO KNOW
- Kayley Boda began vaping at 15 and was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer at 21
- Doctors initially believed cancer was unlikely due to her age, but later found it had spread to the lymph nodes
- Boda has stopped vaping and is urging others to quit while her family raises funds for treatment in Germany
A young woman was diagnosed with lung cancer after she began vaping as a teenager.
Kayley Boda, 22, began vaping when she was 15. However, everything changed when she began coughing up a brown substance that had "grainy" pieces.
“I started coughing up brown, grainy mucus," the retail assistant from Manchester, U.K., said, according to SWNS.
While she initially wrote it off as a side effect of her vaping, her symptoms worsened and led her to go to a doctor. “Then I started coughing up blood, so they did an X-ray and found a shadow on my lung," Boda said.
“They told me they were 99% sure with me being so young that it wasn't cancer, so not to worry about it," she added.
Credit: SWNS
However, results showed that Boda had lung cancer. She was diagnosed at 21, and initially, she was told it was stage one.
She underwent surgery to remove half of her right lung and then began chemotherapy, which she said she had a "terrible reaction" to.
During Boda's surgery, doctors also updated her diagnosis to stage three after they found cancer in six surrounding lymph nodes.
“I couldn't lift my head up, I was throwing up blood, I was urinating blood," Boda said. “I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I lost 8 lbs in four days."
Credit: SWNS
In February 2026, Boda received the all-clear and finished her chemotherapy. However, a month later, she returned to the doctors after experiencing a pleural effusion, defined as a collection of fluid around the lungs, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
While removing the fluid, doctors discovered Boda's cancer had returned and this time it was in her lungs' pleural lining. Her medical team had said she has 18 months left to live.
“The oncologist said this is so rare, and usually something they see in patients that are 80 years old," she said. She added that her doctors cannot definitively say what led to her cancer, but they did tell her that vaping didn't help.
Since Boda has had lung cancer, she not only stopped vaping, she's also now advocating for others to quit too. “Before the diagnosis, I was very naive and thought that something like this would never happen to me," she said.
“I haven't vaped for three months, I've made my partner stop, I've made my mom stop, I'm urging all my friends to stop," she added. “Stay off the vapes, because they will catch up with you.”
Credit: SWNS
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With her cancer ongoing, Boda's family created a GoFundMe to fund a treatment in Germany that could prolong her life.
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