SMorg

This makes me feel mad, sad, depressed and inspired all at the same time.
:(

(Click the picture for the full story)

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.”

…

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.