A knee injury during a basketball game sidelined a rising junior at Georgetown Prep, but things got even worse after he was hospitalized. News4’s Barbara Harrison has the story.
A Georgetown Prep student’s school year got off to a late start as he recovers from a serious injury he suffered over the summer in Africa.
Somi Ezi-Ashi was visiting family in Lagos, Nigeria, when he got hurt playing basketball.
“As I was going up to the rim for a layup, I was fouled and I fell and fractured my knee,” he said.
His mother, Ngozi Ezi-Ashi, met him at a small pediatric hospital.
“He was fine,” she said. “I saw slight swelling on his knee. No open wound, no blood. With all the anxiety I thought it was not that bad.”
She agreed to having his knee X-rayed, but the next time she saw her son, he had been heavily sedated and put in a full leg cast, hip to ankle.
“I couldn't feel any pain at the time because of the sedation,” Somi said.
Health
As the sedation wore off, he said the pain was intense and getting worse in his entire leg. He said the cast was too tight and his hip and ankle started swelling, but the doctor refused to remove it.
“I took Somi home. It was the worst night of my entire life,” his mother said. “He couldn't sit, he couldn’t stand, he couldn't lie down.
She sought a second opinion and learned the tightness of the cast dangerously choked off Somi's circulation.
“His muscles and blood and everything had compacted because of the lack of oxygen to his leg,” his mother said.
Fearing their son could lose his leg and perhaps his life, they ignored concerns Somi shouldn't fly in his condition and brought him back to the U.S., where Johns Hopkins performed six more surgeries hoping to save his leg.
Somi is now an outpatient at Johns Hopkins Physical Rehab Center at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, where his therapist says the outlook is good and he might be able to play basketball again.
“The younger you are, the more easier it is to overcome certain injuries, so I wouldn't rule it out,” the therapist said.
With perhaps months of rehab ahead, Somi must live off campus. On his recent first day back at Georgetown Prep, he admitted he was a little sad not moving back to his dorm with the his friends in the place he's called home the past couple of years. He was greeted with enthusiasm by all who saw him when he arrived.
He's ready to concentrate on his studies and achieve his long-time plans.
“I want to be a reconstructive surgeon,” he said.
