TAYLOR MILL, Ky. — A Northern Kentucky mother is sharing her story to warn parents about the dangers of vaping.

The habit landed her 16-year-old daughter in the hospital.

“We didn't really understand what it was and it started showing up in our house,” said Julie Kirkpatrick, a Taylor Mill mother.  

Almost two years ago, Kirkpatrick said a war started brewing in her home. 

“We were under the impression that this was flavored air when it first came into our life cause there just wasn't a lot of information out there about it,” Kirkpatrick said.

Kirkpatrick is referring to vaping and her teenage daughter Lily Dixon picked up the habit. 

“We tried to encourage her to stop. We tried to tell her to stop. We tried punishing her. We tried bribery and then we realized that she was pretty addicted to nicotine,” Kirkpatrick said.

Vaping put a wedge on Kirkpatrick's family. Sharing her story, the mother wants to warn other parents to confront the issue.

“My goal is go out and talk to a lot of parents to explain to them what this is. because they probably don't know just like we didn't,” Kirkpatrick said.

Kirkpatrick said her daughter's friends had introduced JUUL to her when she was merely 14-years-old.

“Consequently doing this JUUL she was also vaping marijuana which is very dangerous and today's you're not really knowing where this is coming from,” Kirkpatrick said.

Combining the two liquids increased the concentration levels and negatively affected Dixon's health. The family battled with freeing Dixon from the addiction but it only got worse.

“In October of 2019, Lily came to me and said she had the stomach flu,” Kirkpatrick said.

Doctors tested her.

“I can remember very vividly, they came back in the room and said we see something on the X-ray,” Kirkpatrick said. “There's an opaqueness, a milkiness film on the lungs that's very indicative of a vaping associated lung injury and I can remember Lily reaching in her pocket and pulling out a JUUL in the emergency room and handing it to me.”

Dixon had what the CDC is now calling EVALI: e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury.

“More healthcare providers were having the same situation that had patients in their care that had lung injury and they weren’t responding to traditional antibiotics and there some symptoms than they're normally seeing. And so they coined the term after a period of time called EVALI,” said Stephanie Vogel, director of population health. 

Now almost three months later, Kirkpatrick said there's some good news in all this.

“A couple weeks ago they did tell us that Lily's lung function is back to 100 percent which is wonderful because we weren't given any guarantees,” Kirkpatrick said. “But we were also given a warning Lily can never smoke ever again. She has to protect her lung function.”

As of last month, the CDC said 94 percent of EVALI patients from ages 13 to 17 years acquired THC-containing products from black market sources.

The agency reports 60 deaths in 27 states linked to vaping and e-cigarette use. While none of those fatalities are in the commonwealth, the Northern Kentucky Health Department is investigating one death that may be vape-related.