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In Tayo Adelanwa's yard is a wheelchair ramp he doesn't need anymore.

The 10-year-old Kensington boy spent more than four months getting in and out of his house that way, rolled in a wheelchair or shuffling behind a walker. A fixator, a metal vice-grip looking thing, was drilled to his right thigh, six pins penetrating his femur, open wounds at the surface. The boy that loved nothing more than to run around couldn't go down his own front steps.

More than a year ago, Tayo was diagnosed with Perthes, a rare condition that strikes children, most often active young boys, when insufficient blood reaches the top of the femur, preventing bone growth and flattening the top from what should be a rounded fitting.

Perthes struck Tayo at soccer practice.

"I just had soccer practice and I'm in the car, and I'm like, gosh, my leg hurts, I think I pulled something," said Tayo. "And I told Mom and she said well, you probably pulled something. And then it kept hurting, and we went to the doctor and he said, well, you probably pulled something."

He hadn't pulled anything. When he was finally diagnosed with Perthes, Dr. Shaun Standard, a Perthes expert serendipitously located at Baltimore's Sinai Hospital, recommended surgery to install the fixator to aid blood flow and hold pressure off the hip.

"It was rather traumatic to hear that he would have to have surgery, I think, for both of us," said his mother, Mary Anne Gehrenbeck.

Tayo missed the entire first month of his fourth grade year, and an entire season playing baseball, his favorite sport. His team, the Teal Tigers, renamed themselves to support him.

"After a couple games which I didn't play at all, but I came to all the games, they called it ‘Tayo's Teal Tigers,'" he said. Still, it wasn't as fun as playing.

"The biggest challenge, his mother said, was probably getting him to slow down enough when he needed to slow down," said his baseball coach Susanne Smith, of Silver Spring. "I think it was very frustrating for him. He wanted to be out there and be active."

Smith, who has an engineering background, designed the wheelchair ramp. Tayo's school, Rock View Elementary, arranged for an aid to wheel him to portable classrooms and for a bus to get him in the mornings. His teacher sent home extra work over Christmas break to keep him caught up— "sadly"— Tayo lamented. He eventually got back to school with his friends, with the fixator attached.

"So, I showed like, a couple of my friends just a peek, just the outside, and then my friend Anderson said ‘Don't show it to the girls! They're gonna faint!'" Tayo said.

His schoolmates may have been grossed out over the fixator, but they sent him cards in the hospital.

"I feel like we have had so many people who just rallied around us," said Gehrenbeck.

And Tayo rallied too. After "four months and one week" with the fixator in his leg, it was removed and Tayo was allowed to walk on his leg, and then, when he could do that without pain, to run and kick and play. He played last summer on his baseball team, and was able to bat and field, though he still used a courtesy runner.

In September, he raised more than $1,000 for the "Save a Limb" Fund, which raises money for children like him that need orthopedic surgeries at the Rubin Institute for Advanced Orthopedics at Sinai Hospital. He biked six miles through hilly Baltimore for the fundraiser.

"I had to walk my bike up a hill a couple times," Tayo said. But he did, "Because I know what it's like when you can't do something that you always wanted to and like to, it makes life not as fun. I was like, look at me, I hate my life a lot of times, and now look at me, I can play soccer, baseball, anything."

Tayo said being in a wheelchair and having Perthes has made him "a better person," giving him sympathy for the disabled. And when his fifth grade class was recently assigned to write an essay about the worst thing that ever happened to them, Tayo surprised his mother by not choosing Perthes.

"It's not the worst thing that's ever happened," Tayo said. "It's not a bad thing. First of all, I met so many new friends and after I had my surgery I totally got better. I can think of more good things that have happened than bad things."