'Smoking one time put me in hospital for years with mouldy lungs'

A teenager was rushed to hospital after smoking once led to mould invading her lungs, nose and ears – with doctors forced to put her on life support. Madelynn May says she tried marijuana mixed with tobacco for the first time as a teenager while with a friend.

Within minutes, the influencer was coughing, breathless and then passed out – only to later wake up as she was being blue lighted to the hospital. “My lungs failed me and started growing mould. I was at my friend’s house and after a puff, I just couldn’t breathe all of a sudden.

“I kept coughing and eventually passed out from the lack of oxygen. While I was unconscious, his mum called the emergency services and I was put on life support in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”

READ MORE: Harvard professor shares most important thing marriages need to last

READ MORE: 'I hypnotised myself into losing two stone and getting my teeth fixed'

Doctors ran urgent tests but were left stumped by the rapid decline of Madelynn’s lungs. An aggressive fungal infection was quickly attacking her mucous membranes – causing the organs to shut down – but they had no idea why.

Doctors inserted a portacath for fungal treatment but the mould has already spread throughout her body. She said: “My parents got a call saying I was on life support – with no idea how or why it happened. They were terrified. I was being kept alive by a machine pumping me full of medicines to try and help my lungs.

“At first, no one could work out why this was happening to my body. Over the next year, I was sent from hospital to hospital in the hopes that someone could figure out what was wrong with me. The doctors were stumped.

“All they knew was that it was a fungal infection – but not why it had happened or why it was so severe.”

Madelynn, now 23, was in intensive care on life support before waking up. Doctors explained to the model that she had pulmonary failure, also known as respiratory failure, a condition when the lungs can’t oxygenate the blood or remove carbon dioxide.

This was caused by aspergillosis – an infection caused by a type of mould (fungus) that usually affects the respiratory system. Madelynn underwent eight bronchoscopies in four years – a thin tube that examines the body’s airways – and, once discharged, had to use an oxygen tank, every day, at home.

She said: “I basically had mould everywhere. It was in my lungs, ears and sinuses. I lived in hospitals for about a year including being sent to different specialty wards throughout that time. The doctors had to keep going into them to clean off the mould, and I had to walk around with my oxygen tank or my levels would drop really low.

“Having been lying in a hospital bed for so long, I also had physical therapy to strengthen my muscles and I get regular check-ups even now. My health was awful because the mould spores would re-populate. When I put a Q-tip in my ears, it would come out black and I coughed up black phlegm for six months.”

At the time of the incident, Madeylynn was in her teens. Four years after that smoke, she finally felt able to breathe again without the assistance of the oxygen tank. During the start of her recovery, her doctors hadn’t linked the joint to the mould attack – simply because no one had mentioned it.

She said: “By the time I woke up from being on life support, I’d forgotten about the smoking – so the doctors didn’t know about it. But during my recovery, one of them asked if I smoked – that’s when it hit me. I remembered the puff and told them about it, and they said it made complete sense.

“They believe I inhaled fungal spores while smoking the joint, which had both weed and tobacco inside. For a while, doctors thought I’d need a lung transplant but thankfully, the mould hadn’t caused widespread damage yet. I got really lucky – they say my lungs are better than most people my age now. I will never touch any form of smoke again.”

After lying in a hospital bed for so long and then spending time in recovery – unable to enjoy life the same as most other young women her age – Madelynn took solace in sharing her life on social media. Her Instagram account soon took off.

Her lucrative career as a content creator now sees her earn £1.5m a year. “At first, I used social media as a way to distract myself during recovery – it was just something fun. I also wanted to raise awareness of what I had been through. I never imagined it would turn into a career."