Meet Merlin

On this Memorial Day I wanted to share this magnificient story of a man who tried to beat all odds.  Please remember him and the many others who have fought to protect their country.

If you click the title of the article it will lead you to the original.  If you click the picture of Merlin and his mom it will lead you to five other shots of him before and after the incident.

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‘Miracle’ Marine refused to surrender will to live

By SHARON COHEN, AP National WriterSun May 25, 2:44 PM ET

The young Marine came back from the war, with his toughest fight ahead of him. Merlin German waged that battle in the quiet of a Texas hospital, far from the dusty road in Iraq where a bomb exploded, leaving him with burns over 97 percent of his body.

No one expected him to survive.

But for more than three years, he would not surrender. He endured more than 100 surgeries and procedures. He learned to live with pain, to stare at a stranger’s face in the mirror. He learned to smile again, to joke, to make others laugh.

He became known as the “Miracle Man.”

But just when it seemed he would defy impossible odds, Sgt. Merlin German lost his last battle this spring — an unexpected final chapter in a story many imagined would have a happy ending.

“I think all of us had believed in some way, shape or form that he was invincible,” says Lt. Col. Evan Renz, who was German’s surgeon and his friend. “He had beaten so many other operations. … It just reminded us, he, too, was human.”

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It was near Ramadi, Iraq, on Feb. 21, 2005, that the roadside bomb detonated near German’s Humvee, hurling him out of the turret and engulfing him in flames.

When Renz and other doctors at the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio first got word from Baghdad, they told his family he really didn’t have a chance. The goal: Get him back to America so his loved ones could say goodbye.

But when German arrived four days later, doctors, amazed by how well he was doing, switched gears. “We were going to do everything known to science,” Renz says. “He was showing us he can survive.”

Doctors removed his burn wounds and covered him with artificial and cadaver skin. They also harvested small pieces of German’s healthy skin, shipping them off to a lab where they were grown and sent back.

Doctors took skin from the few places he wasn’t burned: the soles of his feet, the top of his head and small spots on his abdomen and left shoulder.

Once those areas healed, doctors repeated the task. Again and again.

“Sometimes I do think I can’t do it,” German said last year in an Associated Press interview. “Then I think: Why not? I can do whatever I want.”

Renz witnessed his patient’s good and bad days.

“Early on, he thought, ‘This is ridiculous. Why am I doing this? Why am I working so hard?’” Renz recalls. “But every month or so, he’d say, ‘I’ve licked it.’ … He was amazingly positive overall. … He never complained. He’d just dig in and do it.”

Slowly, his determination paid off. He made enormous progress.

From a ventilator to breathing on his own.

From communicating with his eyes or a nod to talking.

From being confined to a hospital isolation bed with his arms and legs suspended — so his skin grafts would take — to moving into his own house and sleeping in his own bed.

Sometimes his repeated surgeries laid him up for days and he’d lose ground in his rehabilitation. But he’d always rebound. Even when he was hurting, he’d return to therapy — as long as he had his morning Red Bull energy drink.

“I can’t remember a time where he said, ‘I can’t do it. I’m not going to try,’ ” says Sgt. Shane Elder, a rehabilitation therapy assistant.

That despite the constant reminders that he’d never be the same. The physical fitness buff who could run miles and do dozens of push-ups struggled, at first, just to sit up on the edge of his bed. The one-time saxophone player had lost his fingers. The Marine with the lady-killer smile now had a raw, ripple-scarred face.

Lt. Col. Grant Olbrich recalls a day in 2006 when he stopped by German’s room and noticed he was crying softly. Olbrich, who heads a Marine patient affairs team at Brooke, says he sat with him awhile and asked: “What are you scared of?’ He said, ‘I’m afraid there will never be a woman who loves me.’ “

Olbrich says that was the lowest he ever saw German, but even then “he didn’t give up. … He was unstoppable.”

His mother, Lourdes, remembers her son another way: “He was never really scared of anything.”

That toughness, says his brother, Ariel, showed up even when they were kids growing up in New York. Playing football, Merlin would announce: “Give me the ball. Nobody can knock me down.”

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In nearly 17 months in the hospital, Merlin German’s “family” grew.

From the start, his parents, Lourdes and Hemery, were with him. They relocated to Texas. His mother helped feed and dress her son; they prayed together three, four times a day.

“She said she would never leave his side,” Ariel says. “She was his eyes, his ears, his feet, his everything.”

But many at the hospital also came to embrace German.

Norma Guerra, a public affairs spokeswoman who has a son in Iraq, became known as German’s “Texas mom.”

She read him action-packed stories at his bedside and arranged to have a DVD player in his room so he could watch his favorite gangster movies.

She sewed him pillows embroidered with the Marine insignia. She helped him collect New York Yankees memorabilia and made sure he met every celebrity who stopped by — magician David Blaine became a friend, and President Bush visited.

“He was a huge part of me,” says Guerra, who had German and his parents over for Thanksgiving. “I remember him standing there talking to my older sister like he knew her forever.”

German liked to gently tease everyone about fashion — his sense of style, and their lack of it.

Guerra says he once joked: “I’ve been given a second chance. I think I was left here to teach all you people how to dress.”

Even at Brooke, he color-coordinated his caps and sneakers.

“If something did not match, if your blue jeans were the wrong shade of blue, he would definitely let you know. He loved his clothes,” recalls Staff Sgt. Victor Dominguez, a burn patient who says German also inspired him with his positive outlook.

German also was something of an entrepreneur. Back in high school, he attended his senior prom, not with a date but a giant bag of disposable cameras to make some quick cash from those who didn’t have the foresight to bring their own.

At Brooke, he designed a T-shirt that he sometimes sold, sometimes gave away. On the front it read: “Got 3 percent chance of survival, what ya gonna do?” The back read, “A) Fight Through, b) Stay Strong, c) Overcome Because I Am a Warrior, d) All Of The Above.” D is circled.

Every time he cleared a hurdle, the staff at Brooke cheered him on.

When he first began walking, Guerra says, word spread in the hospital corridors. “People would say, ‘Did you know Merlin took his first step? Did you know he took 10 steps?’ ” she recalls.

German, in turn, was asked by hospital staff to motivate other burn patients when they were down or just not interested in therapy.

“I’d say, ‘Hey, can you talk to this patient?’ … Merlin would come in … and it was: Problem solved,” says Elder, the therapist. “The thing about him was there wasn’t anything in the burn world that he hadn’t been through. Nobody could say to him, ‘You don’t understand.’”

German understood, too, that burn patients deal with issues outside the hospital because of the way they look.

“When he saw a group of children in public, he was more concerned about what they might think,” says Renz, his surgeon. “He would work to make them comfortable with him.”

And kids adored him, including Elder’s two young sons. German had a habit of buying them toys with the loudest, most obnoxious sounds — and presenting them with a mischievous smile.

He especially loved his nieces and nephews; the feelings were mutual. One niece remembered him on a Web site as being “real cool and funny” and advising her to “forget about having little boyfriends and buying hot phones” and instead, concentrate on her education.

But he was closest to his mother. When the hospital’s Holiday Ball approached in 2006, German told Norma Guerra he wanted to surprise his mother by taking her for a twirl on the dance floor.

Guerra thought he was kidding. She knew it could be agony for him just to take a short walk or raise a scarred arm.

But she agreed to help, and they rehearsed for months, without his mother knowing. He chose a love song to be played for the dance: “Have I Told You Lately?” by Rod Stewart.

That night he donned his Marine dress blues and shiny black shoes — even though it hurt to wear them. When the time came, he took his mother in his arms and they glided across the dance floor.

Everyone stood and applauded. And everyone cried.

Clearly, it seemed, the courageous Marine was winning his long, hard battle.

“Some of the folks we lose — the fight to get better is too much,” Elder says. “But Merlin always came back. He had been through so much, but it was automatic. … Merlin will be fine tomorrow. He’ll be back in the game. That’s what we always thought.”

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Merlin German died after routine surgery to add skin under his lower lip.

He was already planning his next operations — on his wrists and elbows. But Renz also says with all the stress German’s body had been subjected to in recent years, “it was probably an unfair expectation that you can keep doing this over and over again and not have any problems.”

The cause of his death has not yet been determined.

“I may no more understand why he left us when he did than why he survived when he did,” Renz says. “I don’t think I was meant to know.”

As people learned of his death last month, they flocked to his hospital room to pay their last respects: Doctors, nurses, therapists and others, many arriving from home, kept coming as Friday night faded into Saturday morning.

Merlin German was just 22.

He had so many dreams that will go unrealized: Becoming an FBI agent (he liked the way they dressed). Going to college. Starting a business. Even writing comedy.

But he did accomplish one major goal: He set up a foundation for burned children called “Merlin’s Miracles,” to raise money so these kids could enjoy life, whether it was getting an air conditioner for their home or taking a trip to Disney World, a place he loved.

On a sunny April afternoon, German was buried among the giant oaks and Spanish moss of Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell. The chaplain remembered German as an indomitable Marine who never gave in to the enemy — or to his pain.

One by one, friends and family placed roses and carnations on his casket.

His parents put down the first flowers, then stepped aside for mourners. They were the last ones to leave his grave, his mother clutching a folded American flag.

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Memorial Day is a time to remember the fallen with parades, tributes and stories.

Sgt. Joe Gonzales, a Marine liaison at Brooke, has a favorite story about Merlin German.

It was the day he and German’s mother were walking in the hospital hallway. German was ahead, wearing an iPod, seemingly oblivious to everyone else.

Suddenly, he did a sidestep.

For a second, Gonzales worried German was about to fall. But no.

“He just started dancing out of nowhere. His mom looked at me. She shook her head. There he was with a big old smile. Regardless of his situation, he was still trying to enjoy life.”

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If you made it this far I encourage you to check out the site dedicated to Merlin.  There are more pictures, guestbook and more of his story (coming soon.)

http://www.merlinsmiracles.com/

Random Thoughts

I LOVE turtles…but turtle babies make my heart melt!!

Watching Dale Jr. race is the highlight of my weekends

I thought it was neat how this bumblebee and flower have the same round shape

I want to run in the pipe too!

This flower is so perfectly made

I want their self-esteem

Only God can make something so vibrant and gorgeous!

*Each picture is linked to it’s original location and picture detail

IEP, Dentist, & Counselor

Rachel has had some great appointments this week.

IEP

Her IEP went really well.  She officially tested out of speech therapy this year.  Woohoo!!  U go girly.  That made her IEP go a lot smoother.  She will still be pulled out for math.  She is in a much lower level.  She will have that for 1 hour a day.  We also put down that she will have 30 minutes of pull out for reading/language.  It’s not that she needs it but we want her monitored. Rachel has this amazing way of soaring at one task and then the other majorly falters.  So we keep things on for monitoring until we see a consistent patter…if we ever see one.

Her teacher did freak me out a little bit.  She got my mommy hairs standing up on the back of my neck.  She tells me that she is going to keep Rachel back in the 3rd grade.  Okay, I dealt with this when Rachel was in 1st grade.  My daughter is not going to bust her hump and get held back.  Seems kinda counter-productive don’t ya think!?  Plus she has had straight-A’s. 

I calmly asked the teacher why she felt this was necessary.  I figured I would let her have her argument before I ate her alive.

She then tells me that if she did hold Rachel back it was only for pure selfishness and not because Rachel should be.  Rachel was such a delight to have this year that she doesn’t want to let her go.  Aaahhh!!

Dentist

Dentist was good too.  Her brushing is getting much better.  She only got told to focus a little more on the gumline in front of her bottom teethers.  She has no cavities.  She has some major crowding but we already knew braces were in her teen future.  We left there pleased.

Counselor

Counseling also went well.  Rachel is one heck of a journaler.  And it seems to help that she found a productive way to vent her anger.  Her homework for the next two weeks was to keep journaling and try to have a good laugh at least one time a day.  She did like 4 times last night.  After each time, her eyes would light up and she would have to go journal that she had laughed.  She is just too cute!

Happy Birthday…

TO ME!!  Hallelujah!  I’m 31.  I cried before I turned 30.  Not because I was afraid of getting old.  I was afraid of 30.  I had a baaad feeling about turning 30.  And it was a stressful one.  I figure 31 HAS to be at least a little bit easier.  We’ll see…

No Wonder

I’m feeling pretty stinkin icky today.  I’ve never had an upper respiratory infection before.  Colds, influenza, done that.  But this is not fun.  This is worse.  Lots and lots worse. 

I tried to update on Rachel’s IEP and her dentist appointment but I can’t think all that well. 

Lack of air to lungs = lack of air to brain = Stupid Beth. 

And I’m working   Maybe they should fix my sick leave and I wouldn’t have to be here to share my germs or wreck my job.  Unfortunately for me, they are still happy to see me.

Speaking of germs I was surfing the net, avoiding some new accounts staring at the back of my head, when I found this little quiz.  I knew it all along. Work and blogging are making me sick.  But I won’t be quitting either!!

How Many Germs Live On Your Keyboard?

Studies have shown that your keyboard and mouse are some of the most germ-ridden devices you own, surpassing even doorknobs and toilet seats.

 
That’s equivalent to the number of germs on 539 toilet seats.

Take this short quiz to see how many germs lovingly call your keyboard home.

3rd Times a Charm!?

I am supposed to have Rachel’s transitional IEP this afternoon.  It’s been cancelled and rescheduled twice now.  I’m not feeling really optimistic about it.  I just hope I don’t show up and find out they cancelled it…again.  That just ticks me off!!! 

Right after the IEP Rachel has a dentist appointment.  She is a wierdo.  She LOVES the dentist.  And 99.9% of the time it’s not a good report.  Strange.

Sunday Bonding

Since the girls were sicky and the boys were avoiding our germs, we used the time to bond.

Matty was gone for his visitation this weekend. Kevin and Austin decided to take in a movie and do a little shopping.  It ended up being a lot of shopping.  They went to hook up the air conditioner and wound up having to replace some things before they could get it to work.  Then Lauren and I ran out of Nyquil, Dayquil and kleenexes so they fetched those for us.  Finally, they went to Blockbuster and picked us up some girly movies.  After they dropped those off they booked it to town and had dinner and watched Ironman.  Good ol’ male bonding.

I made a list of 5 movies that I felt Lauren HAD to see in her lifetime and Kevin was able to find 4 of them.  So yesterday afternoon we watched Moulin Rouge and The Color Purple.  I still can’t believe Lauren hadn’t seen The Color Purple or had to read the book in school.  We had it done by the time we reached high school.  She said that some classes did it this year but hers wasn’t one of them.  For shame!

After Rachel went to bed, Lauren and I watched Girl, Interrupted.  I LOVE that movie.  I can understand why she hadn’t watched that one yet but at almost 16 I figured she was ready for it.  Most of the stuff in the move she had dealt with in real life anyway.  I didn’t realize how long it was but she really liked it. 

For today we have Circle of Friends and I’m sure we will rewatch some of the others.  Plus I know I have some flicks around this house she probably hasn’t seen yet.  Hopefully tomorrow we can get back to our normal routine.  I hate this being at home junk!