Weekend Economists Kickoff the Season, September 6-8, 2013

[Demeter]

8. Back At School, Injured Player Fights On After Fateful Tackle

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/06/219692801/back-at-school-injured-player-fights-on-after-fateful-tackle?ft=1&f=1001

When Devon Walker returned to the Tulane University campus last week, he was greeted with kisses in the hallways. Students and faculty applauded him. One year ago this weekend, in the second game of the football season, Walker, a team captain for Tulane, went in for a tackle and broke his neck. He was paralyzed from the shoulders down. For months, he recovered far from home in two different hospitals. But now he's back in Louisiana and re-enrolling at Tulane, in New Orleans. When asked how he's doing, Walker keeps it simple. "I'm fine, I'm fine," he says. He usually doesn't go into the details: the challenge of using a ventilator to talk. How he can't sleep at night because he just can't get comfortable. Or about the searing nerve pain he suffers all too often, his whole body burning like it's on fire.

There was no need to rush back to school. But Walker did.

"I guess I'm pretty stubborn when it comes to a lot of things. You can ask a lot of my friends and stuff; they can attest to that," Walker says. "When I get something on my mind, I just do it. And if it doesn't happen when I think it's gonna happen, I'm going to keep fighting to make it happen sooner or later."

...A year later, the football team still prays for Walker's recovery while Walker himself is working for it. He's bound to a wheelchair. Just leaving the house in the morning takes 90 minutes and the help of a nurse. Still, three days a week, he's at a rehabilitation center at Touro Infirmary in New Orleans, pushing his therapists to push him.

"I'll put it this way: Sometimes I need a break before Devon needs a break," says Holly Pellerito, Walker's occupational therapist. She worries that Walker might be trying to do too much, too soon.

But this young man has goals. He wants to graduate, with a degree in cell and molecular biology, in the spring. And physically, there's at least some reason for hope. In Walker's arm muscles, Pellerito says, there's twitching.

"So there's something there. There's some connection being made," she says. "So we're not gonna stop until we can try to make something functional."

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