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Cobb County boy back in game after major hip surgery
A Cobb County boy had to walk away from the sports he loves after being diagnosed with a rare hip disorder. Whitten Percy was just seven at the time. But today, he's back on the field with a major surgery behind him.
MARIETTA, Ga. - At 12, Whitten Percy of Marietta has been playing baseball for as long as he can remember.
"He started baseball at 4, started football at 5 and basketball at 5," his mother Lindsay Percy says.
Percy says she and her husband, and their three boys, have all grown up playing sports, but Whitten stood out even in their very active family.
"He was the one that never sat still, always playing sports, always up, throwing the baseball, always out, running with the football," she says.
That is what Whitten was doing in October 2018, playing flag football, when another player pushed the then second-grader to the ground.
"He fell on his left side, and, when he stood up, he started limping," Lindsay Percy says.
Whitten Percy underwent hip surgery at 7 after being diagnosed with Perthes disease.
They had him rest for a couple of weeks, thinking he had strained a muscle.
"We did that, and then put him back in the game," she remembers. "As soon as he took off running again, the limp came back full force. I mean, it was even worse than before."
Whitten Percy says his left leg did not hurt, but it bothered him.
"It just felt like really weird when I would walk on it," he says. "It just felt like something in there was, like, moving and all that, every time I would put pressure on it."
At Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Percy was diagnosed with Perthes disease.
"We had never heard of it," his mother says. "I’d never heard of Perthes, never known a single person that has Perthes."
Perthes is a relatively rare hip condition in which the blood supply to the head of the femur, or thighbone, becomes cut off, causing the bone to temporarily die and, sometimes, turn to mush.
"So, immediately I take my phone, and I start to Google, which you should never do," Lindsay Percy says. "The first thing (I see) is they never will be able to play sports again, and you’ll have to worry about them walking properly. And I just lost it, and I started crying in the kitchen."
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta orthopedic surgery Dr. Tim Schrader says they used a dye to measure how much blood supply was getting to Percy’s femoral head.
It showed almost 100% of that area of his thighbone had no blood flow.
He told the Percys Whitten needed to take a break from sports while they weighed their options.
"‘Keep him out of P.E., and use crutches to take the weight off of that leg,’" Dr. Schrader instructed them. "‘Try to protect the ball that’s crumbling, and we can keep it from deforming.’"
Because Whitten was 7 and his condition was detected early, his body had not yet started trying to heal his femur by growing new bone, which could cause the ball of his femur to become deformed, leading to major complications down the road.
"But, once the ball starts to heal, you know that the ship has sailed, and the cat’s out of the bag," Schrader says.
To prevent that from happening, in January 2019, Whitten underwent surgery to break and reposition his left femur and insert an "L" shaped metal plate to hold the bone in the correct position.
He spent a month in a V-shaped lower body cast.
Then, he had to slowly work his way from a wheelchair to a walker to 6 months of crutches, sitting out two baseball seasons.
But, today, at 12, Percy is playing travel baseball, tackle football and basketball.
"I think he’s doing great," Dr. Schrader says. "His femoral head is healing nearly perfectly round."
Percy still has a slight limp and says he is not as fast as he used to be, but he’s getting there.
And, he says, he is enjoying every minute of it.
"I love baseball," Percy smiles. "I just love everything about it."