Priscilla Morse flew halfway across the world last year to adopt a seven-year-old special needs boy after seeing a heartbreaking photo of the skeletal orphan on Facebook. When Mrs Morse arrived at the Bulgarian orphanage to finalize her son Ryan's adoption, he weighed just seven pounds and was on the brink of death. But after more than a year with his new family in Tennessee, Ryan is gaining weight and starting to speak. In photos taken of him this month, Ryan looks almost nothing like the malnourished child that had to be rushed to the hospital as soon as he arrived in the U.S. In the photos, Ryan's bones are no longer visible through his skin and he smiles like any happy and healthy young boy. Mrs Morse tells DailyMail.com that she first learned about Ryan when she was scrolling through her Facebook in June 2014 and saw his picture on an adoption page. She and her husband David quickly decided that they wanted to adopt the boy. The couple have two biological sons of their own, 13-year-old Dylan and seven-year-old Jack, and a seven-year-old daughter McKenzie, who they adopted from Russia in 2012. Like her brother Ryan, McKenzie also has special needs. She has Down syndrome and congenital heart defect.At the end of October 2015, Mrs Morse flew out to Bulgaria to finalize Ryan's adoption. At that point he was seven years old and weighed just eight pounds. He was covered in hair too, a sign that his body was in a last-ditch effort to save his life by keeping him warm. She says she feared that he would die before she could finish all of the paperwork. Read More: Two Dead As Cyclone Vardah Strikes Near Chennai: Ten Updates 'The first meeting was pretty scary,' Mrs Morse told Inside Edition.'He was bones and skin, he literally looked like a skeleton. The first thing that went through my head was, "he's going to die."'So as soon as she landed with Ryan back in the U.S. in November, she rushed him to Vanderbilt Children's Hospital where doctors immediately put the boy on a feeding tube. 'I had never in my life seen doctors look at a child and burst into tears,' she said. 'They did call social services. They said, "I'm sorry, he's probably going to die."'Ryan spent the first two weeks in America at the hospital before being discharged. He was then readmitted shortly afterwards and stayed for an additional month. But since then, he has been going from strength to strength. Photos of him over the past year show Ryan gradually gaining weight, losing the malnutrition hair and gaining color back to his skin and lips. As of today, he weighs 23 pounds, is beginning to babble like a baby and move on his own. The Morses have also been able to enroll him in public school where his progress will continue with a special needs teacher. 'His progress has been nothing short of a miracle in my opinion. The first time I saw him I couldn't even formulate a sentence. I was convinced he would die before I got him home and now he is a happy, giggly, active boy,' Mrs Morse. Since bringing him home, the Morses have learned that Ryan has cerebral palsy, microcephaly, scoliosis, clubbed feet, and dwarfism - which accounts for his small size. Doctors say it may take years for him to full recover from the special needs he may have developed in the orphanage, and they still don't know how much he will grow or how well he will be able to speak. But the Morses are patient and positive that Ryan will continue to improve. Mrs Morse was adopted herself and had a special needs older brother who died at nine years old. She says she has been inspired to adopt special needs children herself because of how much her parents loved her brother. 'I was pretty young when he passed away, [but] I remember how much my parents loved him in spite of all his special needs,' she said. 'I wanted to give that to a child that was given up because of his special needs. Everyone is deserving of a family.'
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