José Antonio Ramírez Serrano was born in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, with a lump the size of a golf ball on the left side of his neck. The diagnosis was venous lymphangioma — a congenital tangle of lymphatic vessels and blood channels that slowly fills with fluid. It is not a cancer. It can still crush a windpipe, press on an eye, and threaten the chest.

By the time he was nine or ten the mass covered neck, shoulder and upper torso. Relatives compared it to a football or a watermelon: about a foot long and four inches thick. He could not ride a bike or swim for fear a fall would start bleeding he could not stop. Strangers stared. His parents, José Ramírez Sr. and Cindi, sought help in Juárez and El Paso and were turned away. They had no money.

In mid-2012 members of First Baptist Church of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, saw him during a mission visit to the Rancho Anapra neighborhood. Homeland Security Investigations helped arrange humanitarian visas. The church housed the family and raised funds. Doctors at the University of New Mexico Children’s Hospital in Albuquerque said the growth would need a series of operations.

On 17 November 2014 a team of about twenty-five people operated for more than twelve hours. Pediatric surgeon Cynthia Reyes led the case. Heavy bleeding forced them to stop after removing a large slab of the mass — reports said a third of it, a piece roughly thirty centimetres by ten. José spent more than two weeks in intensive care. When he woke he thought he had slept one night; he had slept nine.

The leftover skin and the damaged shoulder still needed work. He returned every few months so the remaining channels would not refill. A year later he was taller, heavier, and said he felt like a new person. Physical therapy and more procedures followed. The church kept paying travel after the family moved back to Juárez.

Lymphangiomas of this size are uncommon; treating one across a border takes visas, a congregation and a public hospital willing to operate for free. The surgery did not erase every vessel. It took enough weight off a child’s chest that he could look forward instead of sideways.

Sources

Associated Press reports on the November 2014 UNM Children’s Hospital operation

Reuters and UPI accounts of the First Baptist Church of Rio Rancho and HSI visas

El Paso Times follow-up with José and his parents, 2016

Irish Mirror / UK coverage quoting Dr. Cynthia Reyes on intraoperative bleeding

Fox News updates on ICU recovery and later housing in Rio Rancho

Telemundo Spanish-language summary of the venous lymphangioma diagnosis