David Philip Vettel, a boy born in the United States in 1971.
Because of congenital diseases, he could not be exposed to ordinary air containing bacteria and viruses, and he had no choice but to spend his lonely and short life in the "bubble".
He was thus given the title of "Bubble Boy".
At the age of 12, David seemed to have finally waited for the dawn of his life. He walked out of the "bubble" with the support of his family and underwent surgery, hoping to live a normal life from then on.
To everyone's surprise, this turnaround directly led to his death.
Before he died, he touched his mother for the first time in his life, and the only time, he was truly exposed to kisses from his mother.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="175" >01 Sick boy</h1>
David was his parents' third child. Before he was born, his parents had lost their eldest son, a boy who grew to 7 months old.
The cause of the child's death was SCID, which is severely complicated by immunodeficiency. This is a congenital genetic disorder. It will not be passed on to the daughter, but there is a 50% chance of passing it on to the son.
Once a newborn develops this disease, the body's immune system is "paralyzed." According to the medical level at that time, the disease was not yet curable.
Patients can only survive in a sterile environment all the time.
Fortunately, David's parents' second child was a healthy daughter. Still, they want another child to accompany their daughter. The doctor told them that if the next child was a son, even if it was possible to fall ill, the healthy daughter would most likely be given a bone marrow transplant in the future to cure him of his SCID disease.
At the same time, the religious beliefs of David's parents did not allow them to have abortions.
In this way, in the expectation of his parents' fears, David was born.
The heart-wrenching thing is that just a few tens of seconds after birth, David had to live in a sterile room.
Since then, even if his parents want to hug him, they can only touch him through the pipe after making strict and cumbersome protective measures.
All the daily necessities that David received from outside the bubble had to be disinfected layer by layer.
At the same time, the compressor needs to continuously send outside air into the bubble after treatment. The compressor was extremely noisy, which meant that the person outside the bubble needed to speak loudly to David, who was inside the bubble to hear.
Not only was it impossible to touch others, but even normal communication was a luxury for David.
Under such medical requirements, David could not even live directly at home after birth. It wasn't until David was three years old that his parents managed to place a sterile room in the home that David could occasionally return home to live.
When David was 6 years old, NASA researchers drew on the idea of space suits and specially developed a set of clothing for David, so that they could temporarily step out of the bubble and feel the outside world.
Through the thick "space suit", David hugged his mother for the first time since birth.
However, this solution is not perfect. This "space suit" is very cumbersome to wear.
Moreover, the suit had to be connected to the sterile chamber by a 2.5-meter-long tube to keep him safe.
Because the dressing process was too cumbersome and the clothes were not comfortable, David did not like to wear it out of the bubble. He tried it only seven times in his life and never used the dress again.
When David was eight years old, immunologists told him that his illness was likely to be likely to be treated effectively for the next decade. Although the doctors were still trying their best to find a cure for him, David had to continue living alone in the bubble.
Because her sister Catherine's blood type was inconsistent with David's, the bone marrow matching surgery originally envisaged could not be performed.
Just after David's 12th birthday, his attending physician found a treatment that didn't require blood group consistency before David finally had the opportunity to receive a bone marrow transplant from his sister.
If all goes well, David will be able to leave the bubble forever and live like a normal person.
David and his family were ecstatic to accept the opportunity for treatment. Through the efforts of a group of doctors, David's surgery was completed.
On February 12, 1984, David was finally taken out of the isolation ward. On this day, freed from the isolation and shackles of the bubbles, David really felt his mother's kiss.
However, to everyone's surprise, four months after the operation, David actually developed lymphoma and regrettably passed away.
Examining the body, the doctors were surprised to find that David's sister Catherine had a dormant virus in her blood that had not been discovered at the time, epstein-Barr virus.
When the virus entered David's body with a bone marrow transplant, it directly destroyed David's well-repaired immune system, which in turn took his precious life.
It is somewhat gratifying that David's case has contributed to the breakthrough of modern medicine. After David, newborns with SCID are 75 to 99 percent likely to recover as long as they have surgery within three months of life. They no longer had to go through the unfortunate life that David had experienced.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="201" >02 12 years in "Bubbles"</h1>
David is not the only person in the world with SCID, but he is the one who has survived the longest.
As David grew older, he began to realize that he was different from others.
He began to understand that his peers were free to get out of the room and explore the larger world outside;
And he is likely to live in this bubble all his life, not in direct contact with others, and not in casual embrace with his family.
Although supported by his family, David received a similar education to his peers. But what cannot be changed is that he has always been in a limited space isolated from others, resisting alone and facing endless loneliness.
Psychologists who have been in contact with David for a while reveal that although David always appears on screen as a cheerful boy, he is also furious about the current state of his life outside the camera.
But no one could explain to him why he had suffered all this, and that no one was able to change this unfortunate situation.
Under normal circumstances, from birth, people will continue to use their senses to receive various stimuli from the outside world, thereby understanding the objective world and perfecting their psychological functions. This is a very ordinary thing.
However, in a way, David experienced 12 years of "feeling deprivation". He is in a small, restrictive space, socially isolated from most people.
He can't get out of the bubble, see the sunrise and sunset every day, can't relieve many of the stimuli in the real environment, such as the sounds of nature, the experience of wrestling, the feeling of contact with people...
This feeling stripping has the potential to cause serious psychological problems. After studying nuclear submarine crews, astronauts, etc., scientists found that people generally experience boredom, anxiety, anger, sleep disturbances, and other physical symptoms after suffering from a period of isolation.
As early as 1954, the Canadian scientific community conducted a famous sensory deprivation experiment. The participants in the experiment were a group of college students. They were asked to spend a week in a closed, solitary confinement room. This confinement room has sanitary facilities, air conditioning, beds and other items.
Unlike the general reality of the situation, the participants need to wear transparent goggles on their eyes, devices that restrict arm movement on their arms, and will not be able to hear outside sounds when they stay in the room.
Early in the experiment, participants mostly chose to sleep. Later, they could not sleep, and could only lie on the bed with their eyes open.
After a while, they start to get bored and are angry that they can't get rid of boredom. Unable to receive external stimuli, they began to whistle, sing, and talk to themselves to create sonic stimuli for themselves.
As the experiment continued, it became increasingly difficult for participants to concentrate or even complete simple mental arithmetic tasks. Even with generous experiment grants to win, most participants announced their withdrawal from the experiment within the first three days of the experiment.
Participants who successfully followed it for a week reported that they had vision, auditory, and tactile hallucinations during the experiment. Some say they once saw dense dots or lines; some say they saw minions with big mouths and black hats; some say they heard sounds or music... These are not real, they are all their imaginations.
Similarly, in July 1962, in order to study underground glaciers, French geologist Sievert entered a cave 130 meters above the ground under the Alpine cliffs, planning to stay for 63 days. He did not enter the cave with a chronograph tool. In the pitch-black cave, his only lighting tool was a headlamp.
When Severe returned safely to the ground, he said, he almost went crazy.
The image comes from the Internet
In January 1972, Severy re-entered an underground cave in Texas for six months, and would continue to record his physical and cognitive abilities, test his memory ability, mental acuity, etc., to provide some reference information for the US space mission.
This time, when Severy returned to the surface, he changed even more. His eyesight suffered long-term damage during the experiment, and he was still suffering from recurrent amnesia three years later. According to him, the mental trauma he suffered during this experiment is even more indescribable. Later, he moved to the forests of the southern United States for rehabilitation.
These experiments remind us that while the Bubble was David's armor that helped him fend off germ attacks, it was also an unavoidable cage that deprived David of the opportunity to enjoy a wealth of external stimuli.
To maintain a healthy physical and psychological state, the stimulation of the external environment is essential.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" data-track="218" >03 Make good use of external stimuli</h1>
David's experience teaches us to consciously cherish the stimuli we are exposed to in our daily lives. While stimuli and the sensations that come with them are extremely common in our eyes, they are essential to our mental health.
Only by receiving stimuli from the outside world can we distinguish the properties of things, and can we strengthen our understanding of ourselves while understanding the outside world.
Although excessive stimulation is also detrimental to our health, certain external stimuli are absolutely essential for us.
For example, during an epidemic, in order to live a healthy life, we can consciously control how and how much we receive external stimuli.
There are two strategies for inputting external stimuli:
The first strategy is to stimulate yourself regularly according to your preferences. This stimulus can be diverse, including sight, hearing, touch, and kinesthecy.
Specifically, in terms of hearing, we can listen to different types of music, radio programs; visually, we can watch movies, read books, and even watch changes in the sky; in terms of touch, we can massage ourselves, or intentionally feel the texture and texture of the surface of objects; and in terms of kinesthesis, we can actively develop indoor exercise programs.
The second strategy is to deliberately introduce novel external stimuli and engage with things that you don't frequently touch on a daily basis. For example, learn new skills such as dance, painting, photography, etc.
In addition, we must always remember that man is a social animal. No one can live a healthy life completely out of the group. In any case, we need to maintain proper contact with family and friends and provide emotional support to each other. Don't let invisible "bubbles" hinder our health!