When the family of five-year-old Caleb sits down at the dinner table, the baby can only watch the meal with envy and gnaw the crushed ice that is poured into his cup …
How to live without food?
Looking at how others eat, he sometimes asks: "Is it true that I, too, will someday be able to eat like all people?"
- It sounds heartbreaking! - exclaims the boy's father. - What is Caleb dreaming of? Not about some pickles, but, for example, about fried chicken. Once he ate a piece, and then he felt very bad …
On July 29, 2009, the media reported on Caleb Bassenschutt from Adelaide, South Australia, who suffers from a rare form of allergy to any food. He cannot eat at all. The most harmless product, in our opinion, makes the boy suffer. He can't even lick the whisk of the mixer when Mom is whipping up the cake cream. The only thing that doesn't harm him is water and lemonade. Any food or any other drink, even in miniscule amounts, immediately causes severe pain in the stomach.
The mother of 5-year-old Caleb Bassenschutt says that her son does not know the taste of sweet, he can not tolerate either raw, boiled or fried food. He is completely intolerant when eating fresh vegetables or fruits. The only thing that does not irritate the child's stomach is water and light dietary non-carbonated drinks based on lemon juice.
Australian doctors admit that the case they had to face is truly unique and that international consultations are needed for a correct diagnosis. It is known that 5-year-old Caleb suffers from a similar ailment from birth and his strongest allergy began already from the period of children's vegetable and fruit nutrition, although the child did not have a negative reaction to breast milk.
Doctors and the child's family get out of the situation in a rather unusual way: a small tube is laid into the child's stomach, which transfers a special liquefied cocktail of nutrients with a high content of proteins, carbohydrates and a small amount of fat. The tube delivers food literally by the gram. During the day, the portable cocktail-serving machine works for 19-20 hours.
The child's mother says that if literally 10-15 grams of food gets into her son's mouth, which the child swallows, then the strongest stomach pains with a likely vomiting reaction are almost guaranteed.
“If we go to dinner in a restaurant, then Caleb's menu consists of only one item - a cube of ice. He constantly asks us what we eat and what food tastes like. In February he had his birthday, we made a birthday cake, but Caleb could only blow out the candles on it, the whole cake went to his sister and friends,”says Melissa Bassenschutt, Caleb's mother.
According to her, Caleb's own sister has nothing like these problems and the girl eats her usual food without any problems.
Professor Peter Sly, Caleb's physician, describes the baby's condition as "extremely unique." “I have heard of similar problems before, but in our case it is impossible to determine what causes such an allergic reaction and intolerance,” he says.
Now Caleb lives on artificial nutrition: a vitamin cocktail - a nutritional mixture consisting of carbohydrates, proteins and a small amount of fats - enters his stomach through a tube 20 hours a day. The mechanism that pumps this mixture is placed in a backpack behind Caleb, with which he does not part.
The boy's parents are now advertising on their website a charity event - a bike ride from Melbourne to Adelaide and a charity concert on February 21, 2010 - to raise money for their son's examination.
Well, without water - how ?
The Englishwoman Michaela Dutton developed an allergy to water after giving birth. As the Daily Mail reported in April 2009, the woman is now 21 years old and her son Mitchell is 3 years old, but Michaela cannot even wipe her son's tears away. And there is no need to talk about redeeming the child! And she herself can take a shower no more than once a week, and then only for ten seconds. Mikaela should not drink tea, coffee, juices, because her throat will immediately become blistered. A few drops of Diet Coke is all that the unfortunate woman can afford.
This is rare - one in 230 million. 15 minutes after contact with water, the skin begins to burn as if a person is being stung by millions of bees at the same time, and this can last for hours.
Last year, the press around the world reported on 19-year-old Australian Ashley Morris from Melbourne, who developed a water allergy at the age of 14 after being treated with penicillin. Taking a swim, taking a shower is a painful procedure for Ashley, but the girl has already taught herself to endure the water for one minute, albeit with tears. The skin then becomes covered with a rash and itches so that sometimes Ashley tears her to the point of blood. As a child, Ashley went in for sports, but now she had to quit; she does not appear in the sun, because from his rays she begins to have hives …
Considering that our body is 70 percent water, then water allergy is a seemingly absurd thing. But 30-40 such cases are known in the world.
Karen Dejen, from Christchurch, New Zealand, says that her friend's boyfriend started this at the age of 10, but no one in the family was surprised: his parents and grandfathers on the father's side are the same. So, maybe we are talking about a hereditary disease?
Mildred Till from Alberta, Canada, who is allergic to water, also has a history of inheritance, as her father and grandfather had. The girl suggests that perhaps she and her relatives are the reincarnation of people who died during a tsunami, flood or other disaster related to water?..
Allergy for the XXI century
39-year-old Debbie Bird absolutely cannot stand modern technology. For many, it has become habitual to use a mobile phone, reheat food in a microwave oven, or drive a car. For many, but not for Debbie. As soon as she approaches a computer or other complex device, the unfortunate woman develops a painful rash all over her body, her eyelids swell. Electromagnetic smog prevents her from living normally. She has already moved to an ecologically clean area, painted her house with a special carbon paint, and pasted a protective film on her windows. The couple sleep under a silvered mesh that reflects radio waves. They don't have a microwave oven, no cell phones, no wireless connection at all. And the TV - only with a plasma screen, because the former emitted gamma rays.
“I can't even get into the BMW that our friends are driving in,” says Debbie, “otherwise I’ll have an unbearable headache and ringing in my ears.
It all began with the day Debbie, her husband Tony, a writer and environmental consultant, and their eight-year-old daughter Antonia moved to a suburb of Greater Manchester. It turned out that all the neighbors use wireless Internet and cordless phones.
- At first I started having insomnia, - says Debbie, - then there was a skin reaction - my face burned, especially my forehead and eyebrows. I was constantly feeling very tired, and the convicts swelled three times.
Another victim of progress is Seira Dacrae from the suburbs of London. Due to the fact that there are various technical devices everywhere, she suffers from headaches, nausea, high blood pressure, hair falls out, memory and digestion problems have arisen. Seira can live only outside the city, and in the city appears in a special protective net, like those used by beekeepers.
“I'm sure people are laughing,” Seira says. - Well, let. After all, the grid helps me to survive.
The house, the wall wallpaper of which is lined with staniol, the windows are curtained with a special fabric made of silvered polyester threads, also helps Seira survive. And recently Seira got hold of an electrosmog detector and immediately tracked down the "harmful" neighbors.
Many people now suffer from electromagnetic and other fields (and there are about 400 of them). Humanity has been captured by its own craving for comfort. Hence - poor health, chronic fatigue syndrome … No one yet knows what the long-term consequences of the ubiquitous electromagnetic smog are. Maybe in the future we will have to live in staniole houses and cover our heads with a net? Maybe we will stop bearing children? Or will mutants appear? What if we start to go crazy? Or will we finally invent a reliable protection against the radiation of technology?..
Protection or … extermination?
Let's not forget that there is also an allergy to dust, wool, fluff, even to semen. But why is the number of allergy sufferers growing so rapidly? Some believe that the cause is a weak immune system. In fact, it is not weak, but, on the contrary, supersensitive!
There are different versions. One of them is like this. While people were being mowed down by diseases like plague and cholera, the immune system was loaded to capacity. But then - thanks to vaccinations, antibiotics, good hygienic conditions - these ailments disappeared. And the immune system has to exercise - always. So she tries herself on new irritants - about 20 thousand allergens are already known. But in countries where "diseases of dirty hands" are common, allergies are extremely rare.
Another version: we wash our hands, but this does not save us, because the environment is polluted to the limit: exhaust gases, gasoline, chlorine, electromagnetic smog, and much more.
So, does nature protect and save us, strengthening our immune system? Or, on the contrary, hastily gets rid of us, making us unable to normally perceive even water, food, air?
Yana KIRICHENKO