10:41 AM CDT on Monday, June 26, 2006

By Jeremy Desel / 11 News

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Daniel Wachira is out of the hospital and recovering nicely after a marathon surgery.

KHOU-TV

He had 12 hours of surgery that included taking skin from his back to build a cheek.

It doesn’t take long for the 4-year-old from Kenya to get warmed up.

“I just look at this boy, and I just know he is different,” guardian Francis Jones said. “That he is truly a special little boy.”

A face that was once a patchwork of scars hiding a face that had little underneath is now living tissue, growing over bone that will grow with him.

“What they did to that little boy is just literally incredible,”  

He had 12 hours of surgery that took skin from his back to build a cheek, and he also had an expander put in his jaw to enlarge it.

Now his cheek is smooth, his mouth smaller, eye wide open – and he’s tough.

“Daniel had not complained one time,” guardian Larry Jones said. “I’ll see him wince, and I’ll ask him, ‘Daniel are you hurting?’ he says, ‘no, no.’

“Even when Francis changes the bandages on his back, he says, ‘no, no,’” Jones said. “He is a tough little guy.”

Getting back to normal includes relearning the simplest things, like waffles in the morning.

“We eat!” Daniel said.

“I have absolute confidence that in the following surgeries he has a purpose in this life, and he is going to be there to do that,” Mrs. Jones said.

His being here at all is amazing: He was abandoned at birth in Kenyan trash heap, found just in time.

“He was literally snatched, I mean literally snatched from the jaws of dogs and in three minutes he would have been dead,” Mr. Jones said.

The dogs destroyed half his face, but not his spirit.

“What happened to Daniel and how he has responded to everything is nothing short of a miracle,” Mrs. Jones said.

Daniel is still singing his familiar song in his native tongue, clearer now and better every day.