TUCSON — U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Thursday felt the sunshine on her face for the first time since she was shot, as doctors prepared her to leave behind the Arizona hospital where she dazzled them with her rapid recovery.
Her next stop will be a Houston rehab center, where she will face an even more arduous task: getting life back to normal.
Her husband said he hopes she will make a full recovery, calling her “a fighter like nobody else that I know.” The doctors who will help her offered a more sober outlook.
“Not everyone always gets 100 percent restoration, but we help them to get to a new normal,” said Carl Josehart, chief executive of the rehab hospital that will be the Arizona congresswoman’s home for the immediate future.
Giffords is recovering from a Jan. 8 bullet wound to the brain but has been making progress nearly every day.
Late Thursday, trauma surgeon Dr. Peter Rhee said staff at University Medical Center in Tucson helped Giffords stand and get into a wheelchair. They took her to a deck at the hospital, where she breathed in the fresh air and felt the sun.
“I saw the biggest smile she could gather,” Rhee said, noting that Giffords loves the outdoors.
“We are very happy to have her enjoying the sunshine of Arizona,” he said.
Earlier, doctors ticked off other markers of her continuing improvement: She scrolled through an iPad, picked out different colored objects and moved her lips. They are unsure whether she is mouthing words, and they don’t know how much she is able to see.
Her husband, Houston-based astronaut Mark Kelly, said he thinks she has tried to speak and can recognize those around her.
“I can just look in her eyes and tell,” Kelly said at a final briefing at the Tucson hospital. “She is very aware of the situation.”
Giffords is expected to be moved this morning to TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital. U.S. Capitol police arrived Thursday afternoon to set up extra security measures at the 119-bed facility, which is part of the massive Texas Medical Center complex.
Giffords will stay there until she no longer needs 24-hour medical care — the average is one to two months. Then she can continue getting up to five hours a day of physical and other rehab therapies on an outpatient basis, Josehart said.
