teamMarius

Today Jess and I had a really successful day with Marius, which was very encouraging. We hung out in his room for over two hours and just did random things. He's in a bigger room now and there is a new burn victim who is 12 who he seems to be making friends with. Also, we helped the nurse change his blanket and his chest doesn't have burns on it, but it looks like his back probably does. His legs and feet are completely burned also. We saw his hands without the bandages today for the first time and they look like they're healing well but are still pretty red and scabbed. He definitely looks like he has lost a lot of weight and muscle in his arms, etc. so hopefully now that he is eating better he will be able to gain some of that back. Jess and I are going to try and work with him on things that can strengthen him. Today Jess got the idea to hit a balloon back and forth with him and he seemed to really enjoy that and he just used what's left of his hands. After a half hour or so it was an arm workout for us, so hopefully it will do him some good too. Jess and I decided today that we're going to try to start spending the majority of our hospital time with him. If Ionut isn't able to come to America then we want Marius to be as comfortable with us as possible and also we just want him to have more entertainment than he has now.

Ash and Jess