Two thousand miles away, Chiron and Joy Thompson stared at the picture of the sad-faced baby with the grossly deformed leg in a Grenadian newspaper.
The Thompsons left Grenada 25 years ago. They're now American citizens, and the responsibility to their native land weighs heavier than ever.

"Even making my least here," Chiron said, "I am still doing better than anyone there."

We talked in the backyard of the couple's Germantown home just before dinner on Monday. Chiron stayed after school to help his math and science students at Fitler Academics Plus Elementary. He was still in a suit. Joy, a child-care provider, was serving cold water to the last of her adorable charges.

Blessed with two healthy daughters - Rhea, a senior at Central High, and Kara, finishing Community College - the Thompsons ached for the stranger who wasn't.

"We had an obligation, having achieved what we've achieved, to bring them here," is how Chiron, also a part-time pastor at the Reformed Episcopal Church of the Messiah, explained the decision.

Like the doctors in Grenada, he had no diagnosis and no plan for Kassiha.

"But here," he said, "there is always hope."


A costly solution

Mother and daughter arrived in May, seeking treatment at Shriners Hospital for Children. Doctors there referred Kassiha to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where she was diagnosed with Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome.
"It's essentially a tumor of blood vessels," John Dormans, chief of orthopedics at Children's, told me.

Hers is a one-in-a-million condition prone to frequent infections, which, if not properly treated in a developing country like Grenada, could lead to death by sepsis.

Without surgery, he said, Kassiha faces a lifetime of having "this massive leg and foot as an anchor."

With surgery - a tricky amputation given all the blood vessels - she might walk with a prosthesis.

If Kassiha were from Philadelphia, she might qualify for charity aid through Children's Hospital's foundation. International needs are harder to meet.

The hospital already wrote off $40,000 worth of care for Kassiha, acting chief operating officer Madeline Bell explained. Now, officials are weighing if, or how, to proceed.

"This could require a lifetime commitment," she said.


Moving forward

As a good-faith effort toward the $81,000 cost of the amputation surgery, Chiron set up a fund for Kassiha with $400 from his own pocket. But the teacher and preacher is visibly uncomfortable at the thought of asking anyone for money.

"We don't want to beg," he said, aware that Philadelphia is home to many worthy causes of its own.

A teenager in his church was recently jailed after a stabbing. Six of 10 students at his school come from low-income households.

Still, he sees helping Kassiha as something that even people of modest means can do.

"The less taken you are with your own needs, the more blessed you'll be extending yourself."

Now 18 months old, Kassiha is a giggly vision in a yellow gingham sundress with pink flower. She devours yogurt. She repeatedly tosses a toy from her stroller, just to see how many times I'll fall for the stunt.

She can crawl, pull herself up, and say a few words.

Sensing the toddler's restlessness, Joy Thompson stands her next to a plastic slide. The giddy girl takes a step with her left foot.

That's as far as she gets. Her right leg is not only weighing her down, it's oozing from what Dormans calls "a weeping ulcer."

Kassiha stares at the round, fleshy mass on the ground and starts crying. She just wants to move, but her body won't let her.



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Monica Yant Kinney | To Contribute
Donations may be sent to the Kassiha Francis Medical Fund, c/o National Penn Bank, 9 W. Evergreen Ave., Philadelphia 19118.


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Contact Monica Yant Kinney at myant@phillynews.com or 215-854-4670. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/yantkinney