Who Thought Sucking on a Battery Was a Good Idea?

Millions of Americans, some of them teens who would never have picked up a cigarette, are now vaping. Last year’s panic might be the least of our worries.

- By Stephen S. Hall. Photographs by Jonas Bardin

Dr. Lynn D’Andrea was standing in a small consultation room on one of the upper floors of the Children’s Wisconsin hospital this past Fourth of July weekend when a younger colleague on the pulmonary team, Dr. Brian J. Carroll, told her she needed to see a teenager who was having severe difficulty breathing. As Carroll later explained, young doctors are trained to deliver a quick, singlesentence synopsis—a “one-liner”—to the attending physicians in the hospital when preparing them for a new consultation. The one-liner in this case began, “Previously healthy teenager coming in with two to three weeks of fever, weight loss, bilateral chest X-ray findings.”

D’Andrea, who had been on call at the hospital that entire week and holiday weekend, at first believed Carroll had misspoken. “I thought we were mixed up,” she admitted, “and he was telling me the same consult for a second time.”