Georgia 12-year-old makes comeback from major his surgeries
SMYRNA, Ga. - Twice a week, 12-year-old Nasani Stephen comes to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's Ivy Walk sports medicine clinic in Smyrna to work with physical therapist Sarah Holland.
"Nasani has had quite the journey," Holland says. " He's had several surgeries. Anytime you have surgery, it's just a shock for your body and your system. So, your muscles can get really weak."
His ordeal began in the fall of 2022 when Nasani developed a limp on his left side.
"I was feeling like a slight numbness in my leg," he says.
The pain felt like it was in his knee, and it would come and go, Stephen says.
"But, when I stepped down on it, or put too much pressure on it, it was hurting," he says.
Nashitah Stephen noticed the limp.
"I asked him, I said, 'Hey, what's wrong,' his mother says. "He said, 'My leg really hurts.' So, I took him to his pediatrician maybe 6 times."
Stephen says the doctor could not find anything wrong, and Nasani reassured her he was fine.
She now wishes she had pushed harder.
"If your child is limping, maybe something is going on," Stephen says. "Children don't limp for nothing."
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta orthopedic surgeon Dr. Robert Bruce says Nasani's symptoms sound like a hip condition he sees, typically in obese teenagers.
"They may start walking with a bit of a hitch in their gait, or a limp," Dr. Bruce says. "The pain is often very subtle at first, and interestingly enough, the initial pain in most of these patients is in the knee. We call this referred pain.
Nasani Stephen, 12, was diagnosed with a his disorder that may have been linked to his weight.
Then, in October 2022, Stephen fell at school, and his hip ball slipped out of its socket.
When he landed at a Children's Healthcare of Atlanta emergency department, the Stephens family finally got a diagnosis.
Nasani Stephen had a condition known as a slipped capital femoral epiphysis, or SCFE.
Stephen's growth plate in his hip had become weak and unstable.
"I think that a combination of stress and strain on the growth plate causes this weakness and slippage of the hip," Dr. Bruce says.
Hormones, vitamin D deficiency, and being overweight are all thought to play into SCFE, he says.
Bruce says he is seeing the condition more often lately in teenagers, many of them overweight.
"Obesity is far more common in young people now than it was, say, 30 years ago, and this is one condition that is fairly directly related to obesity," he says.
Stephen needed surgery to stabilize his hips.
Then, 5 months later, he underwent another major operation in which Dr. Bruce reconstructed and realigned his left hip.
As he healed, Stephen and his mom began to tackle the lack of structure in his diet.
"She had tried to put me on diets before, but at some point I just asked her, and she'd give me what I wanted," he explains.
But these days, Nasani Stephen is Sarah Holland's most committed patient, trying not just to get stronger but healthier.
"I want to get him as strong as he's able to get and then teach him the exercises and the habits, so he can continue his journey on his own," she says.
At 5-feet-5-inches tall, Stephen is down to 150 pounds, and is getting there.