Being isolated at home can be rough on a person,
and now many of you viewers know that from firsthand experience. But imagine if you had to spend your entire
life in quarantine? Imagine if every day invisible pathogens threatened
to take your life away...pathogens that were harmless to other people because they were
naturally protected against them. You are a special case indeed, and there will
be no contact or cuddles with other people for as long as you live. You’ll never feel the touch of another person’s
skin...not even your own mother’s. You are a walking time bomb; the very planet
is your predator, the air is pervasive with invisible threats that lay in wait to finish
you off. Welcome to the life of a bubble boy. The bubble boy we are talking about was named
David Vetter. He was born September 21, 1971, but he wasn’t
his mother’s first child. That first child died after seven months,
and the reason was because he was born with something called “severe combined immunodeficiency”,
or SCID. We’re going to get into details later about
what that actually is, but first let’s get back to the story of David. After those parents lost their first child
to this very rare disease they were told that if they should have another child, there was
a good chance it could also be born with SCID. The couple already had a healthy girl, and
so they thought they’d go ahead and try to have another baby. As soon as baby David came out of his mother
he entered his world of isolation. He was under attack from the moment he was
delivered, and so had to be confined inside a specially made cocoon bed that had been
sterilized. This was now David’s world, although in
the years to come that cocoon would get larger of course. If David had not been cocooned, within months
his body would have become infected by various diseases, and those would overwhelm and kill
him. The outcome wasn’t good for SCID kids. But David didn’t give up the ghost easily. He grew up, was able to walk and talk, but
his entire life would be inside a chamber. He was never hugged, like all children should
be. He didn’t get to go out and play, or go
to school, so you might be wondering just how he survived when he could have no contact
with the outside world. How did the poor guy even eat? Ok, so first a 101 on what David had and why
he had to literally live in a bubble. Severe combined immunodeficiency…what’s
that? It doesn’t sound too good. As you can probably guess, it means that a
person is born with virtually no immunity to anything. You see, you guys watching this show might
not know that inside you there is a battle going on. You have soldiers on your side fighting for
you all the time, night and day, 24/7, until the day you bite the dust. This immune defense system of yours is your
heavenly protector, your biological knight in shining armor, because when it detects
foreign agents, let’s call them enemies, it defends you against them. These invading pathogens are detected as the
enemy and so your immune system responds. This is happening all the time, but sometimes
your defense system has to put up a fight, and you might feel quite ill. Sometimes you don’t win this battle, and
that’s you gone, dead, you’ve “popped your clogs” as the British might say. That’s why some folks with compromised immune
systems might not fight infections off very well. We’re speaking in layman’s terms here
of course, ‘cos this is not a show about biology. It’s a show about David. You see, David wasn’t born with this in-built
defense system that you have. He wasn’t just what you might call a sickly
child…he was virtually under attack from everything that existed in the world. He didn't have a compromised immune system...his
entire army was MIA. Our world, you see, is full of microorganisms,
and some of these can hurt us, organisms we call pathogens. That word basically means “disease-producing”. They are everywhere, and you are completely
fudged if you can’t fight them at all. That’s why David had to live in a bubble. But how did that go? Well, all the time David was in this bubble,
his parents hoped and prayed he could have a bone marrow transplant, but he needed the
perfect match. Getting that wasn’t easy, so he had to maintain
this life in his bubble. His sister was his great hope at first, since
it was thought her bone marrow would be the right fit, but unfortunately it wasn’t. You see, if a transplant is successful the
body will produce white blood cells and then the immune system will kick in, so David just
had to wait. Meanwhile, this is how life in the bubble
was. He needed to eat and drink of course, but
anything sent into that bubble had to be sterilized. You might ask, how do you sterilize a cheese
and ham sandwich? Well, there were holes in the bubble, so as
a kid, nurses could wear gloves and spoon feed him. He ate only food from jars and cans and that
food had to be sterilized. Everything that went in that chamber had to
be sterilized. There were no sandwiches, unfortunately. The process of sterilization didn’t involve
just wiping stuff down with alcohol or detergent, but putting all items in a special chamber
and then pumping that chamber with ethylene oxide gas at a high temperature. The item would then be aerated for one to
seven days and then it could be put into David’s bubble. So, he had food…he had toys…he had a TV…books…you
name it, but all these things had to go through this sterilization process. The guy had to breathe of course, so air was
pumped into the bubble. The problem with that was the generator was
really noisy, so talking to David could be hard, not to mention how he must have felt
with that constant noise in his life. In time, he did at least get amplifiers to
make communication easier. His parents gave him an education. They showed him love, but in a non-contact
kind of way. His sister even slept next to the bubble,
so David always had company. He’d even fight with her at times, as siblings
tend to do. One time he reached out of his bubble with
his gloves on and tried to punch her. He was too slow to make contact, something
that irked the confined child. It was hard for the boy.. He couldn’t go out and play like the other
kids. There was one instance when his sister announced
she was going to get a burger from the local fast-food place. David shouted, “I want to go.” He thought for a while, and said, “No, I
don’t.” He spent a lot of time at hospital and a lot
of time at home, so you might be wondering how he got from place to place. His bubble was too big for a car, or a van,
and just a short trip outside of a bubble would have killed him. Well, he had a transport bubble, and he even
went to the movie theater in it once and watched “Return of the Jedi.” Better still, when David was six, NASA made
him a kind of spacesuit, albeit one connected to his bubble with a tube. He got to walk about a bit and feel a little
more human, but it seems he didn’t quite like it and after about seven times in the
suit he just said he didn’t want to wear it anymore. As he got older of course he matured in his
mind. At eleven years old he was no longer a little
kid but a big kid, and seeing as he was always on TV he became aware he was a bit of a star. Was that a good thing, though? Some people think it wasn’t, because his
life was a bit like “The Truman Show.” In fact, while he always smiled for the cameras,
we now know he sometimes went into fits of rages when they were turned off. He didn’t want to be a goldfish in a bowl,
a kind of weird roadside attraction for millions of Americans. The kid matured and he wanted out, but there
was no way out. “Why” he would think, “has life dealt
me this awful hand?” We should say, there had been boys in bubbles
in the past, but never had someone got so old in a bubble. The bubble was no place for a teenager, and
so when David was 12 he was finally given that bone marrow transplant he so direly needed. The doctors decided to try a new technique
and give him a bone marrow transplant that wasn’t a perfect match. His beloved sister was the donor, and in October
it happened. For four months David seemed ok, although
still in his bubble. Things quickly went wrong, though, because
his sister had passed a virus on to him, the Epstein-Barr virus. Most of you might have this virus in you,
but it lies dormant. At the time, the doctors couldn’t screen
her for this virus. It attacked David and he couldn’t fight
it. Infections overwhelmed his body and he ended
up falling very ill from a cancer of the lymphatic system. He spent two weeks in the hospital, finally
freed from his bubble. Experiencing the real world, touching the
skin of his family, able to breathe real air, to finally live without the hum of a machine
in the background. He actually asked for a Coke, something that
couldn’t be sterilized for his bubble life, but the doctors refused him on the grounds
it wouldn’t help his condition. But he kissed his mother for the first time
in his life…she would sit down beside him and comb his hair, an experience that was
both sad and wonderful. He was out of his prison, but fading fast. He was truly alive at least, but not long
for this world. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
had finally done him in. On Feb. 22, 1984, he was still conscious but
he knew his time was coming. He made jokes that morning, but as if an angel
had whispered in his ear, he winked at his doctor, closed his eyes, and slipped into
unconsciousness. If you believe this kind of thing, his bubble
is now the infinite majesty of the universe. He’s no longer confined, but immortal, and
forever loved by those whose feelings he’d touched. This writer doesn’t mind admitting it, he’s
feeling a bit choked up right now. Disease can be a fascinating, if terrible
subject, so check out, “What Is Locked-in Syndrome? Worst Thing That Can Happen To You!” If that’s too much for you right now, try
this instead….
