Local man’s death linked to vaping
Jude and Sabine Samuell (Courtesy photo)
On Jan. 6 Sabine Samuell of Columbia Falls took her husband Jude to the emergency room at Logan Health in Whitefish.
The man had been suffering from a cold and now had shallow breathing. Over the course of a few hours, his condition worsened greatly. He was transferred to the intensive care unit at Logan Health in Kalispell. He was intubated and by 8 p.m. he was life flighted to a hospital in Spokane.
Jude Samuell’s lungs were failing, and as the days passed it became clear that they would never get better. Mr. Samuell, whose life was now supported by a extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine (called ECMO) needed a double lung transplant to survive. Mrs. Samuell said doctors looked for a donor pair of lungs for him, but because he was unconscious and regressing, he was not a good candidate and he was ultimately denied by the donating hospitals.
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