Theodore David DeVita (1962 – May 27, 1980) was an American boy with severe aplastic anemia requiring him to live in a sterile hospital room for the last eight years of his life.
He lived surrounded by plastic sheeting containing a door-sized space through which sterilized objects, including food, clothing, and books, and occasionally doctors and nurses, could pass in and out.
From a later review of medical notes, his younger sister, Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn, learned the staff saw DeVita as alternately "hostile, angry, and cheery".
Especially during the first year, he indulged in tantrums, throwing things out of the sterile area in his room, and creating a cavity in the wall to hide thousands of his pills, which he hated taking.
[citation needed] His story, along with that of Texas SCID patient David Vetter, inspired the 1976 TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.