ST. PETERBURG, Fla. — A Bay Area woman is one of the latest victims suffering from a vaping related illness.

Madison Massey, 20, said she woke up last week with severe chest pain and shortness of breath.

“I was like in a bed curled in a ball. I couldn’t really breathe. I was hurting a lot so I went to a walk-in clinic, and they said I had chemical pneumonia, and they thought it was from the vape,” she said.

Massey is like a growing number of young people who vape. She said she started using the popular Juul vape pen when she was just 17-years-old.

“I’ve been doing it for about three years, and I just kind of got into it through other people recommending it, and I just kind of got hooked,” she said.

Now she’s in a Bay Area hospital because of it, and she says doctors told her she’s one of the lucky ones.

“I started crying,” Massey said. “I was really scared because they were like, ‘We’re not trying to scare you even more, because you caught it in time.’ But they were like, ‘We just want you to know that you’re very lucky you came in when you did, because you could’ve passed away within a week.’”

That scary news is what Massey said prompted her to start sharing her story on social media.

She said she’s gotten a number of responses. In fact, she said she’s heard from at least 100 people who said they quit vaping after hearing her story. It’s the one good thing Massey said came out of this.

“They’re following it and they’re loving it, because they’re like this is encouraging us to quit. So I’m like as long as there’s those positive people, then I know it will outcast the negatives, because there are some people who really need to hear this, so why not share it if I can?” Massey said.

She continued, “I got gifted from God to be surviving still, so might as well show that there’s ways to get out of it.”