Podcast: Clearing the air – navigating vaping and CF

Transcript 

Voiceover: Welcome to the CFStrong Podcast. CFStrong covers the successes and challenges faced by those living with cystic fibrosis. You’ll hear first-person stories, and conversations with health professionals, friends and partners. Just a heads up, guests may share their personal views about treatments and health management, but please remember, this is not medical advice and you should always follow the advice of your clinic team regarding your health. 

Brad: Gday everyone and welcome to this incredibly exciting new season of the CF Strong Podcast. I’m your host and fellow CF patient Bradley Drybar. And as a 20-something-year-old living with cystic fibrosis, I know that this decade of our life is not only challenging but rather it comes with some big questions we ask of ourselves. I’ve taken the time to sit down with six guests who like me, are all in their twenties living with cystic fibrosis as they share their honest and unique perspectives on 10 big questions across 10 separate episodes. I’ll ask one question of all six of our guests in this particular order. You can expect to hear answers from Adam, Blake, Caitlin, Ellie, Sam, and Taylor. In this second episode of our series, we’ll hear from each of our six guests as they answer their personal thoughts and take on vaping with cystic fibrosis and how they feel when those they know vape around them.

Adam: So in a nutshell, um, I usually don’t really care if people vape. I won’t vape myself because I know how harmful it is, but for the most part, I’m not really bothered if other people do it. Um, and especially around me, maybe I should be a little bit more confronting, a little bit more, uh, upfront about it to people, but I, I honestly, it’s not really something I can concern myself with. 

Blake: Yeah, well, um, yeah, well, I sort of, a lot of my mates do it and, you know, I’m not gonna be, I, I refuse to be one of those people that just like sits in a car and just go and just like sort of tell people what to do just because I’ve got cf. But, um, I guess in terms of people who do have CF and you know, obviously on a night out you get randoms offering you or vape or you know, whatever, if you’re at a nightclub or a bar or anything like that, um, I’m a pretty hard no on it. I think, uh, you know, I, I equate it to, you know, if you had a really bad liver, why would you keep drinking? You know, just, just sort of stuff like that. I don’t really see the point of chucking any more stuff in your lungs that doesn’t need to be there. So I’m a pretty hard no, but, um, but yeah, I do know a couple of people who, who have CF who, uh, you know, maybe dabble, dabble here and there. Um, but yeah, I’m a very hard no on it, I think.

Caitlin: I’ll be honest, I do have friends and family members that vape, so it is around me. Um, I’m very lucky that the people who do it do it not near me. Um, I think peer pressure is a very real thing and unfortunately, some people succumb to it and, um, that’s how I guess some people get into it. And then I think having CF doesn’t change that. Um, I’m personally not a vaper never have been and never will be, but, um, I do think that sometimes peer pressure is a factor with it and, um, yeah, it can be a little bit unfortunate. I would like to think people with CF are smarter than that too and know that I guess, um, I guess it’s damaging. 

Ellie: Yeah, so I struggle with it a little bit because I feel like I don’t really have a place to tell anyone else what they can and can’t do. So I guess that’s kind of where I struggle with potentially some of my friends that I don’t think I really have anyone else in the friend group that doesn’t either smoke or vape. Um, a lot more vaping and I guess because it’s also kind of not as taboo as smoking or it hasn’t necessarily got the side effects of like the smell or anything. It’s definitely more widespread and I guess easier to sneak into venues rather than it being outside. So that’s probably also a challenge. Um, I think my challenge with it is with cystic fibrosis being quite invisible, you never really know if someone’s suffering with it. So your decisions to smoke or vape, um, and with vaping kind of being on the increase, um, you never really know who it’s affecting, um, around you. And that’s really difficult because like I said, I’m not really in a place to tell someone that they should or shouldn’t. That’s, that’s a personal decision. But I think I have been really fortunate recently, like I said with my group of friends, that they’re quite considerate, like a lot of them do know that I have cystic fibrosis, so they will, you know, vape outside or, or take it somewhere else when, when they’re heading out does mean I kind of get left, left in the room for a little bit. Um, but I also do have a couple of people that will say, oh, no, we’ll, like, we’ll take it in terms and we’ll go outside and I’ll stay here and we’ll have a bit of a catch-up and a chat, and everyone kind of rotates and alternates. Um, definitely struggled with it, I guess. I grew up in, is like a really small country town, so I definitely more struggled with those elements back then because while people knew that I had CF I almost felt like they didn’t probably understand it to the fullest extent to then like to then understand how those actions were affecting other people. Um, and just like, I guess lots and lots of jokes growing up around like having a smoker’s cough or all of those kinds of things when they knew that that wasn’t the case and it was, it was a joke and kind of would brush it off. But yeah, I kind of, I didn’t appreciate that, but um, it was hard kind of being in a smaller town to like really branch out and, and move around friend groups or, or anything like that. So I think really moving to Canberra and, you know, being able to choose the people that I’m around, um, that’s really helped. But, um, yeah, I, I struggle with telling people like whether or not they can do it. Obviously from the CFS perspective, don’t if you have it, um, you know, the, the damage it can cause like, like I said, we’ve already got so many disadvantages and things that are kind of not going our way, so I feel like it’s a bit of a shame when, you know, you’re kind of, you know, pushing fast forward on those effects by, you know, increasing the likelihood of infection or, or damage from, from doing those things. Yeah.

Sam: Uh, it’s a tough one man. It’s, uh, very similar to smoking. Uh, it’s everyone’s personal choice. I get that. I just hope that everyone makes the choice with, uh, a full understanding of what the negatives are to your body. And if you fully, fully understand the negatives and still wanna take that risk, then I can’t tell you not to do it. But I just hope that everyone who does it with CF and not CF fully understand the risks and the negatives and I guess knows what they’re doing to their body in the end. 

Tayla: Uh, uh, I, I used, I don’t know if I’m the only one that did this, but growing up I used to like to give people like stink on and be like, what the freak are you doing smoking outside? People are walking here. I still do it, uh, . But um, yeah, I think people who vape regardless if they have CF or not, if they have CF, and I don’t want this to sound really mean, but like I kind of just think, what are you doing? How dumb are you? Like, we’ve fought this hard, what are you doing it for? Um, the people who smoke around or vape around people with CF, I kind of think the same thing. Like, you are knowingly doing it to yourself. If you don’t wanna do it to yourself, that’s fine, but don’t impact the people around you who have fought so hard. Um, I have a lot of friends who vape and I kind of have had to bite my tongue from like, going on a rampage like, you have healthy airways, what are you doing? You are born with them. Why are you treating them like terribly? Um, and I’m not gonna lie, growing up seeing friends who like would do some drugs, would do smoking, would do vaping, I’d get very upset because I’m like, I don’t understand how you could take something so special and just throw it and willingly put your body through that. Like, even peers around me at school, I’d be like, why are you smoking? Why are you vaping? Like, here I am fighting for my life every day, coming to school, still smiling all the time, used to be told, oh, you’re always so smiley, I’ll cry if I don’t. But like, I think like it used to frustrate me and I, I’d get so upset and so angry too because I didn’t understand how someone could do that, um, to themselves. And I mean, I know someone with CF who does smoke, and I’m like, oh, I kind of just distanced myself because I don’t understand it. I can’t comprehend how you could do that to yourself or to the people around you who suffer from illnesses like CF. 

Brad: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of our series. We thank you for taking the time to sit down and hear the value that each of our six guests provide. And we wanna thank them for taking the time to be a part of the series two. We hope that this has not only been informative, um, but also refreshing to hear that there are many different perspectives to each of these questions and the challenges we face as CF patients. Once again, I’m your host Bradley Dryer. Thank you so much for tuning in to the CF Strong podcast. 

Voice over: Thanks for listening to this episode of the CF Strong Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on your favourite podcast listening platform so you don’t miss the next episode. And if you enjoyed this podcast, we’d really appreciate if you could leave us a review. It helps other people find safe, strong, or share us with your friends. Also, a quick reminder that the views expressed in the Sea of Strong podcast may not be reflective of Cystic Fibrosis Community Cares viewpoints. The podcasts are designed to share information and provide insight into the lives of those living with cystic fibrosis around Australia. This podcast was made possible thanks to support provided by the Australian government. Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk to you next time.