Caroline Derrick-Gray's world shattered in the final days of 2023. Her husband, Nick, a fit and active 57-year-old, began December in robust health. By the year's end, he was dead – with medical professionals pointing to his vaping habit as the likely cause of the catastrophic lung damage that killed him.
A Love Story Interrupted
Caroline first met Nick, a six-foot-tall former soldier with a captivating smile, while she was working as a model. Their romance properly began years later, in 2013, after he reconnected to apologise for a past heartbreak. The spark was instant and powerful. Just two months after reuniting, Nick proposed. Caroline said yes, but with one non-negotiable condition: he had to quit smoking.
Having watched her own father die from a smoking-related heart attack, Caroline was adamant. Nick agreed and switched from traditional cigarettes to using a vape. The couple enjoyed eight happy years of marriage in Dorset, filled with coastal walks, camping trips, and a quiet, contented life. Nick worked as a handyman, while Caroline trained as a nutritional coach.
"Nick was a powerful, fit man," Caroline recalls. "A farmer's son, an army veteran, he'd run three marathons and cycled across Canada twice. He had a presence about him."
A Rapid and Devastating Decline
The first alarming sign appeared on Friday, 8 December 2023, when Nick began coughing up blood. Initially diagnosed with a chest infection, his condition deteriorated rapidly. Within days, he was admitted to the lung specialist ward at Dorchester Hospital, 40 minutes from their home, with pneumonia.
"The consultant told me: 'Your husband's in a really bad way. This is very serious,'" Caroline remembers. "He said it was down to vaping." Despite treatment, Nick's lungs were failing. He was moved to intensive care and placed on a ventilator.
In a heartbreaking turn, Nick was sent home on 21 December, with Caroline acting as his nurse. They shared a quiet Christmas Day together, but by Boxing Day, he was coughing up blood again. Rushed back to hospital, the situation became dire.
Late on 29 December, Caroline received a frantic, breathless call from Nick's hospital bed. "He shouted down the phone: 'I'm not going to make it, I love you' and the phone went dead," she says. By the time she reached the hospital, medics were fighting to save him. Nick died at 12:48am on 30 December 2023, with Caroline holding his hand.
The Vaping Link and a Plea for Awareness
Nick's death certificate recorded a cardiac arrest caused by pneumonia. His medical records, however, noted "possibly vape-associated pneumonitis." Caroline and his doctors believe hypersensitivity pneumonitis – a severe inflammation of the lungs often linked to inhaled irritants – was the key clue.
"A doctor told me, 'Hypersensitivity Pneumonitis is the big clue that vaping was involved,'" Caroline explains. "When he was ill, they did so many tests and they couldn't find anything bacterial or fungal that was causing the decay of his lungs." She later saw an X-ray of his lungs. "They were gone. They were full of black holes. One had a tear, one had collapsed."
Nick's case was filed on a Yellow Card report, the UK system for reporting suspected safety concerns with medical products. Caroline is now furious that vaping is still widely perceived as a safe alternative and is determined to warn others.
"If Nick had tried gum or patches, I absolutely know he would be here today," she states. Her mother was widowed at 57 due to smoking. Caroline became a widow at 55. "I never in a billion years thought I would be a widow younger than my mother... I don't want anyone else to sit at a hospital bed holding their husband's hand at just 57."
Her message is a simple, powerful plea for people to reconsider what they inhale into their lungs, highlighting that the long-term health impacts of vaping are still being discovered, with potentially tragic consequences.
