Going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee...

This blog update is thus entitled as a nod to the upcoming Elvis Tribute Week, an annual commemoration of Elvis Presley's life and death. If you are in to that sort of thing, I would recommend going to the candlelight vigil, which is supposed to be very moving. I doubt that anyone from Memphis actually cares about these events, but it draws thousands of visitors every year. If your are thinking of coming to pay tribute to the King, watch out, because in August the weather is pretty stifling here, with daytime highs approaching 100 every day.

In my little world, I'm making what seems like very slow but continuous progress. I met with my Memphis neurosurgeon for the first time since my surgery, and though he can be a very blunt, dour man, he showed what can only be described as "elation" at my progress. He was delighted that so much leg mobility had returned, that I had control of my bladder (rare for spinal injury victims), and that everything in my back was holding together. He promptly congratulated himself on a surgery well-done and told me that he had performed a similar operation on five more people this summer. Summer, he explained, is when people do "crazy things." Two of his patients were involved in diving accidents, one had been driving a cement truck when it fell off an overpass, and two had tried to commit suicide. This conversation made me realize that people in medicine must see the world very different from the rest of us. Especially those that deal with severe trauma.

The only disappointing thing that came out of our meeting is that I learned that I would have to wear my back brace for another three months. It's not the end of the world, and it won't prevent me from walking, but I won't be able to return to Houston as soon as I wanted, and it means that I will be in Memphis for what feels like a long, long, time. You may have gathered from earlier messages that I wasn't too thrilled to return here, and I think this merits some explanation. Part of why it isn't much fun to be back here is that most of my friends moved away since we graduated from high school 11 years ago. Another reason is that I don't feel that Memphis is a particularly cosmopolitan place. After growing up here, I chose to live in Houston, Innsbruck, and Berkeley largely because they offered so much culturally and geographically appealing. But then it occurred to me that I'm being rather elitist by not liking Memphis, treating it like a place that is a waste of my time. Certainly, I wouldn't have chosen to live here again-- my circumstances necessitated it. But since that's the case, I've had to reevaluate my situation and my perspective.

First of all, if I don't make new friends soon, I'm going to go out of my mind. Spending nearly all of my day in the house and interacting almost exclusively with mom and dad isn't going to work for more than a couple of weeks. The rehab center where I go three times a week has some nice therapists, but most of the other patients are from another walk of life. To put it delicately, most of them have personal recollection of the second world war. Thus its not the social hub that I experienced in the Houston rehab center, so I'll have to look elsewhere for entertainment. One potential lead is to explore the potential opportunities that my high school alumni network may provide. The advantage of going to a small, elite private school is that they are tied into a lot of interesting programs and people in the Memphis area. I'm thinking of asking if there is anyone at my school that works with the Latino community here. Memphis is a very black/white polarized town, and I think it would be fascinating to interact with a largely invisible group. Since I never much liked hanging out with the Memphis high-society types anyway, I figured I'd fit in better with another socially marginalized community. Also at my high school, it might be fun to do some private tutoring and/or substitute teaching. It would be really fun to get to know the faculty from a different perspective, and to see how much the school has changed since my time there.

Along other lines, my friend Bruce, from Berkeley, offered to get me in touch with one of his friends who happens to play for the Memphis Redbirds minor league baseball team. I figure that those guys would be a blast to hang out with, and quite a few of them would understand what it's like to do rehab after a serious injury.

Anyway, I wish I could tell you that I was running around and that everything was better, but that's still going to be a long time. I'm trying to make the best of this situation, do my rehab each day, and make the rest of my time tolerable. It's not the best lifestyle, but far from the worst. I'm grateful that I will be able to walk again sometime soon, and that I've eluded some of the graver consequences of spinal injuries.

Finally, I want to thank all of you that have sent me cards, letters, and books the last several weeks. I have immensely enjoyed reading them, but I have been really bad about thanking each of you individually. I'm still working on it!