David Vetter - Life in The Bubble

Life in The Bubble

Water, air, food, diapers, and clothes were sterilized before entering the sterile chamber. Items were placed in a chamber filled with ethylene oxide gas for four hours at 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60˚C), and then aerated for a period of one to seven days before being placed in the sterile chamber.

After being placed in the sterile chamber, David was touched only through special plastic gloves attached to the walls of the chamber. The chamber was kept inflated by air compressors that were very loud, making communications with the boy very difficult. His parents and medical team sought to provide him as normal a life as possible, including a formal education, and a television and playroom inside the sterile chamber. About three years after David's birth, the treatment team built an additional sterile chamber in his parents' home in Conroe, Texas, and a transport chamber so that David could spend two-to-three week periods at home. David had his sister and friends for company while at home. A friend arranged for a special showing of Return of the Jedi at a local movie theater that David attended in his transport chamber.

When David was four years old, he discovered that he could poke holes in his bubble using a butterfly syringe that was left inside the chamber by mistake. At this point, the treatment team explained germs and David's condition to him. As he grew older, he became aware of the world outside his chamber, and expressed an interest in participating in what he could see outside the windows of the hospital and via television.

In 1977, researchers from NASA used their experience with the fabrication of space suits to develop a special US$50,000 ($191,800 in 2012) suit that would allow Vetter to get out of his bubble and walk in the outside world. The cumbersome suit was connected to his bubble via an eight-foot (2.5 m) long cloth tube so that he could venture outside without serious risk of contamination. David was initially resistant to the suit, and though he later became more comfortable with the suit, he used it only seven times before outgrowing it, and never used the replacement suit provided for him by NASA.