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After three months in hospital, a Perth teenager whose nang addiction left her bed-bound is finally going home.
Molly Day, who had to relearn to walk, is sharing her warning as hospitals record an increase in nitrous oxide injuries.
The 19-year-old was addicted to the gas, inhaled through canisters designed for commercial caterers and commonly known as nangs.
Relieved and in recovery, she was able to walk out of the Royal Perth Hospital with the help of a crutch.
Day used nangs heavily for two months and they stripped away the lining of her spinal cord, cutting function to most of her body.
In 2018, the Royal Perth Hospital ED saw two patients present with complications from chronic use of nitrous oxide.
By last year that had increased to 26.
“Even in my ward now there’s two more people who have been admitted in the past month for the same thing,” she told 9News.
“And both of them still had no idea the dangers.
“I think that’s awful and sad the word still hasn’t got out you know.”
Emergency physician and clinical toxicologist Dr Jessamine Soderstrom said she was seeing adults in their 20s and 30s having difficulties walking.
“They often need to stay in hospital for many weeks and months to learn how to walk again and this has an incredible cost to the health system sometimes in tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she told 9News.
Nangs have been upgraded to a schedule 6 poison by the TGA. Last year the state government banned sales to under 16s.
Soderstrum is part of a departmental working group looking at how to reduce harm.
Day says awareness is a start.
“A lot of my friends was doing nangs,” Day said.
“I was told they weren’t dangerous because you could get them from anywhere.”
She’s accepted invitations to speak to students at Perth high schools.
“Look at me and what happened to me,” she said.
“You think it won’t happen to you but it definitely can.
“Just think twice. It’s not worth it.”
