The boy, who lived in a bubble

Website learned an amazing story about a human life. This life was short and difficult, and has remained in people's memory as a very unusual medical case.

Recall Tolstoy and his passage about unhappy families. Family Vetter, pious Christians, was unhappy because of genetic problems.
The essence of the disease is:




The only chance to save the lives of newborns - a bone marrow transplant. The family of a potential donor was Vetter - their daughter Catherine. Maybe that's why they decided still to give birth to an heir. The more that doctors from Baylor College of Medicine - John Montgomery, Mary Ann Stout Wilson and Raphael - assured the parents that if the SCID did happen, it will be possible to put the boy in a sterile box to bone marrow transplantation. That is, if the bone marrow will not work, for some reason, no one thought.
The child was born, the bone marrow does not fit. The boy continued to live in a sterile bubble. He was baptized with holy water disinfected and remained in prison for a dozen years, almost until his death.





Before I get into the sterile cocoon David, water, air, food, diapers and clothes thoroughly disinfected.
The boy became mentally unstable, irritable and depressed: it is quite quickly realized what kind of life awaits him, and how it differs from ordinary people




When David was six years old, it decided to experiment specialists from NASA, making the boy suit walks. However, the boy for a long time could not bring himself to put on the suit (ibid germs!), And then - to get out of the bubble and see the first set of objects. Anyway, only six years old child made more than six steps in the same direction. A NASA released a detailed article about the experience of the construction of children's suit.

Started 80th. The US government began to make a noise on the subject is too expensive (more than 1, $ 3 million) of the experiment, becoming uncontrollable David and lack of hope. However, it was not clear what is offered - to kill him, or what?





They appointed new doctors who offered the boy pump gamma globulin and antibiotics, which then meant certain death. Parents flatly refused, and then the team spent three years to persuade the parents to allow the same bone marrow transplant - all from the same sister. No, she would not be better suited, but in ten years there were some results of the fight against exclusion. Parents persuading, an operation carried out (and, incidentally, against the wishes of the boy filmed it on film).

It was found that operation was a death sentence




First, in the bladder, the boy developed mononucleosis, and had to be extracted from the bladder. For the first time in 12 years my mother touched his son, and the boy immediately asked Coca-Cola, had dreamed all his life. Coca-Cola is not given, found hundreds of tumors. Burkitt's lymphoma, coma, death, divorce of parents. In the name of the disease appeared - "boy in the bubble syndrome».

Personal psychology and best friend Mary David Murphy never gave publish written at his request, "a true account of his life." And written on the tombstone touching words: «He never touched the world, but the world was touched by them».






via med-history.livejournal.com/42737.html