A Lesson Learned

In 2023, when Gina McDuffie woke up on her birthday, she opened her eyes to one of the best presents she had ever received: freedom from cancer. She planned her surgery at M.D. Anderson for March 17 on purpose; she wanted to start a new year liberated from the agonizing doctor’s visits, sleepless nights, and endless questions that had plagued the previous year. “I feel like the medical team at M.D. Anderson really did save my life,” Gina says.

Gina McDuffie grew up in Texarkana. She attended Wake Village Elementary, Westlawn, Pine Street, and graduated from Texas High in 2004. She earned her dental assistant license and currently works in the front office at Kids Spot Dentistry in Texarkana. Her and her husband, Michael, have been together for twelve years and are the parents of three daughters: Madison McDuffie, 19; Madison Welch, 17; and Parker McDuffie, 10.

Even in her teen years, Gina says her vice has always been smoking. What started as a game of stealing Virginia Slims from her Nanny’s purse became a way to cope with periods of drama, heartache, and loss in school. “We were the cool kids, or so we thought. But, our group of friends went through a lot of heartache during high school, and we turned to bad habits instead of getting help we truly needed to grow from,” Gina says. “Looking back, I wish I would have been informed on how addicting nicotine was, how bad we actually smelled, and how silly we looked.”

In 2013, Gina started vaping. At the time, it seemed better and healthier than smoking cigarettes, which caused the smoke smell to stick to her hair and clothes. “I vaped for a solid ten years,” Gina says, “I saw the vape evolve from the tiny skinny ones to the big fat ones to the handheld ones that you see all the teenagers with now.”

Gina says that the flavors of the vape pen were addictive. “Vapes are flavorful. It really does taste like a dessert,” Gina says. “They also don’t smell, so it’s very convenient. You can sit at your desk and vape. As long as you blow it in your shirt, smoke is not coming out to give you away.”

Then, in May of 2022, Gina’s health started going downhill. She started feeling nauseous every day and suffering from headaches and migraines. “I love food, but I couldn’t eat anymore. I was eating plain pasta every day just to get some food into my body,” Gina says. “I had gastric bleeding as well, so I consulted with a doctor at Texarkana Gastroenterology. They did a colonoscopy and a scope and told me that I had a hiatal hernia.”

The diagnosis did not change Gina’s constant illness. A short time later, her side started hurting, so her family practice doctor sent her to Wadley for a scan, but they didn’t find anything because the doctor told them to check the opposite side. Then, in September of 2023, Gina hardly recognized herself in the mirror anymore. “The moment that I will never forget is when my daughter looked at me and asked if I was doing drugs,” Gina says. “I was 114 pounds, and I felt terrible. But, I didn’t know what was causing the symptoms.”

On December 31st, Gina contacted a family friend, Cortney White, who owns White Family Clinic in Ashdown, Arkansas. “Cortney could tell that something was wrong, so she started running some tests,” Gina says. “But, before we had any answers, I had another episode that put me in the hospital. On February 5, 2023, I felt like knives were stabbing me in the chest. I turned to Michael and said, ‘If I die in my sleep, I think I’ve had a heart attack.'”

The next morning, Gina went to St. Michaels and told them that she thought she was experiencing a heart attack. They immediately jumped into action, and one of the tests they ran was a chest X-ray. “The X-ray showed that I had a couple of nodules and shadowing in my lungs, and someone made the remark that it could be cancerous,” Gina says. “But, after 36 hours in the hospital, we still had no answers. In fact, they sent me home and said that my lung was clear. I was more confused than ever.”

Gina felt like she was telling doctors something was wrong, but no one could find what was causing the problem. She even had a doctor suggest that it might all be in her head, but Gina did not stop fighting for a better quality of life. After a biopsy and another doctor’s recommendation that her lung tissue could be cancerous, Gina reached out to Cortney so that she could secure a referral to M.D. Anderson. “I’m sure there are great doctors in Dallas,” Gina says. “But, when you hear the ‘C-word,’ you want the very best, and in my mind, that was always M.D. Anderson.”

Michael and Gina drove to M.D. Anderson was in Houston for an initial consultation, during which the medical team reviewed Gina’s original scans from St. Michael’s in early February but ordered another scan of their own on February 28th. After the scan, Dr. Ravi Rajaram finally provided a diagnosis to Gina: neuroendocrine carcinoma in her lymph nodes. They also performed a secondary scan, which showed that a nodule in Gina’s lung had declined significantly in size from the time she had the initial scan. “The medical team decided surgery was the best option to remove two clusters of lymph nodes, but they wanted to keep an eye on the nodule in my lung since it was shrinking on its own. This meant that I did not have to remove half my lung,” Gina says. “Both Michal and I felt like we were finally getting answers, and we felt lucky that things were not worse than they were. However, I was so scared. When you hear ‘cancer’ and ‘stage three,’ it really changes your perspective.”

When Michael and Gina left M.D. Anderson, they had a plan. Surgery was scheduled for March 17, 2023, one day before Gina’s birthday. But, on the way home, Gina and Michael couldn’t help but think that the nodule in Gina’s lung was shrinking. “The only thing I can attribute it to is that I stopped vaping and smoking completely on December 20, 2022,” Gina says. “I was scrolling Facebook and saw some articles about vaping, and then I went down the rabbit hole. I started doing some major research, and I wondered if vaping had anything to do with my weight loss, headaches, and nausea.”

After a night of reading horror story after horror story, Gina threw away her vape. “For ten years, the first thing I did every morning when I woke up was look for the vape, and then I would use it all day.  Even though I had horrible headaches or wanted to throw up, I was smoking that vape from sunup to sundown,” Gina says. “So, after I did my research and saw that it might be causing all these issues, I threw it away and never turned back again.”

Gina went out and bought nicotine patches, but she took the resolve to quit her habit a step further. She also recognized that part of the allure and addiction to smoking came from the repetitive hand movements of holding something in her hand and bringing it to her lips. “I remembered something that my mom told me about my nanny when she quit smoking. My nanny would take ink pens, remove the ink, and ‘smoke’ the ink pen. Even though she was just blowing air around, it helped keep her hands busy, “Gina says. “So, I went and got a package of straws, cut them up, and started smoking on straws. But I don’t remember smoking many straws after surgery. With stage three lung cancer, I thought I was dying. It scared the crap out of me!”

Soon, March 17, 2023, arrived, and Gina was brought to the operating room at M.D. Anderson for what was supposed to be a robotic surgery to remove two lymph node clusters: one between her lungs and one behind her sternum. However, when the doctor started the surgery, he quickly noticed that the lymph nodes were “sticky,” and they were difficult to remove cleanly and smoothly with the robots. So, he decided to switch gears. “They flipped her on her back and decided to go in by hand,” Michael says, “But, when the doctor came to explain what had happened, we trusted that he made the right decision. He just kept saying that everything was ‘sticky,’ and he didn’t trust the robot to be able to pull the lymph nodes away gently.”

The surgery lasted four and a half hours, and Gina was left with a 14-inch scar, a collapsed lung, and some minor damage to her windpipe; however, the doctor was able to remove the lymph nodes successfully. When Gina heard the news on the morning of her birthday, she felt like the terrors of the last year were finally behind her. “I remember waking up incredibly thankful that someone had finally listened to me. I was grateful that we made the right decision coming to Houston,” Gina says. “I also knew that I would never smoke again!”

However, when the doctor relayed the story of the “sticky” lymph nodes, the first thing that she thought about was vaping. “Michael and I thought the same thing: the sticky substance had to be the vape juice I had been inhaling. People don’t think about the juice they are inhaling or that it has to go somewhere in your body! I really do think that was what he was scraping out of me. He said that it was embedded in my heart and esophagus,” Gina says, “My boss even attended a dental seminar the same week of my surgery, and they discussed the ‘sticky’ residue left in your mouth from vaping.”

When Gina was released from M.D. Anderson after surgery, she went home to rest with her family and her constant companion, a chihuahua named Pico. “He’s my soul saver, always curled up with me, especially after surgery,” Gina says. “And Michael is my backbone. He’s the calm to my storm. He’s the laid-back dad, and I’m the hot mess. But, when my ADHD kicks in, and I can’t focus on what is happening or what the doctor said, Michael takes it all in and separates it for me.”

After her recovery, Gina began to feel healthier, happier, and better than she had in a long time. The headaches were gone, and she could enjoy eating again. Overall, even though the medical field seems reluctant to point the finger at vaping the way they have done at smoking cigarettes, Gina feels certain that what she experienced can only be attributed to her decision to vape for ten years. “I’ve asked my doctor if I can definitely say that what happened to me was caused by vaping, and he says, ‘No, but if that’s what your heart says, go with your heart,'” Gina says. “Honestly, it would be hard to convince me otherwise. How else can anyone explain why the nodule in my lung is shrinking without any chemotherapy or radiation? The only thing I’ve changed in my life is my decision to give up vaping and smoking.”

Gina’s theory about vaping’s role in her cancer may not be 100% proven, but it has been confirmed in many ways. For example, Gina has always struggled with allergies even though she consistently gets her allergy shots. “Since I’ve stopped vaping and smoking, I haven’t been sick one time. I believe that there are so many chemicals in a vape that we really don’t know what we are inhaling into our lungs,” Gina says. “I thought that vaping was better for me than smoking, and while they are both terrible, I definitely do not believe that vaping is better for anyone.”

Since her surgery, Gina has also had her theory confirmed multiple times through reading the stories of other people who had health problems after vaping. Many of the stories echoed details from her own. “Every time I see one on Facebook or social media, I try to share it,” Gina says. “Even though this happened to me, so many people around me still vape. When I’m at work, and teenagers come in with vapes, I try to talk to them or speak to their parents. Sometimes, I will even show them my scans.”

On social media, Gina has been touched by the story of Kaylyn Green, who posted in May 2024 about how she developed breathing difficulties while vaping and was diagnosed with bronchitis. However, when she stopped breathing at the wheel of her vehicle, she passed out and crashed her car. She also spent an extended hospital stay in the ICU after they finally determined that she had CO2 poisoning.

Gina also shares the story of Tyler Vickers, which Greg Vickers posted in February of 2024. Tyler developed severe arm and chest pain, which led to an inflammation of his heart muscle. Greg says that the cardiologist who spoke with them said that they are seeing a “staggering” amount of patients with symptoms that they believe stem from vaping. He said they see hearts and lungs “shredded” from fiberglass inhalation. “These are just two of the social media stories I see all the time,” Gina says. “Smoking was my downfall, and had what happened to me not happened, I would probably still be vaping myself. I truly did believe that it was better for me than cigarettes, but then, when you stop and do your research, you quickly see how terrible it is. I even found an article about how vaping was causing mice to have lung and stomach cancer. If it’s doing that in the test animals, what do you think it’s doing to us after inhaling all of that for years and years?”

Currently, Gina has to go back to M.D. Anderson every three months for scans of her lung nodule, which has either stayed the same size or continued to shrink. In fact, Gina hopes that the positive feedback from her doctors may mean she can delay the following scan for six months to a year. “I feel so much better now that I’m not vaping or smoking. I gained my weight back and have not had any more pain, which I may have been experiencing because something was pressing on a nerve,” Gina says. “I’m glad it was because the pain is what really forced me to have to go in and pay attention to what was happening with my body.”

Though Gina is the kind of woman who would prefer to stay in the background, she shares her story this month because she hopes it can help even just one person decide to quit vaping. “We all know someone who is vaping right now; I know so many, including some members of my family. Sometimes my words go in one ear and out the other,” Gina says. “But, I really do want to plead with them to PLEASE stop vaping! They are killing our generation and so many of the next.”

However, no matter what circumstances people may find themselves in, Gina hopes she can inspire others to advocate for their health. “Doctors may not have believed me, but I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t in my head,” Gina says. “I’ve learned that you have to fight for your health. Even when you get pushback, you have to keep going. Listen to your body, and don’t give up, even if you aren’t getting any answers. I even started to doubt myself sometimes, but this was a lesson learned.”