Topic: surgery

With everything else that’s going on in the world (most of it negative) including, but not limited to: the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the protests in Wisconsin over Governor Scott Walker’s hi-jinx, chaos in Libya, and violence in Ivory Coast, you could be forgiven for forgetting about Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her ongoing recovery from a gunshot wound to the head in Tucson this January.

Obviously, it’s nothing short of a miracle that Representative Giffords survived almost having her brains blown out at close range in the first place. Then it was unreal that she survived all the surgeries that followed. Fast forward just a little more than two months later: According to a recent article in The New York Times, doctors recently removed Giffords’ tracheotomy tube, which means that she can talk. She can also walk. She can see out of both eyes, even though her left eye socket had been fractured by the bullet. She has memory and cognitive skills. She recognizes and remembers her family and friends. She can laugh, smile, and demonstrate her personality to staffers. She has enough stamina to spend three to five hours a day in therapy. She hasn’t exhibited any signs of depression, or even frustration. (Who could be frustrated and depressed by this kind of extraordinary progress?) She knows that her husband, astronaut Mark E. Kelly, will be going into space on the shuttle Endeavor in April. And she plans to travel from the rehabilitation facility in Houston to Florida to be there. More »