What's Going on with Gabrielle Giffords?

NEW YORK – Three months after the Arizona attack that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in a coma, she is walking, talking, and wants to attend her husband’s space shuttle launch. But will she ever fully recover? In this week’s Newsweek, Peter J. Boyer has the untold story of the congresswoman’s struggle.

Reports on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ recovery have been so positive that there’s even been talk of her running for Senate. But in conversations with Giffords’ staff, doctors, and husband Mark Kelly, Peter J. Boyer has learned that for all the progress Giffords has made, she still has a long way to go.

Since Giffords was shot Jan. 8, at an event at a Tucson mall, her family and staff, colleagues and friends have been eager to deliver stunning details about her recovery. The first big news was delivered by the president himself at a memorial service: “Gabby opened her eyes for the first time.” Dr. Peter Rhee, a trauma surgeon in Tucson, said she had a “101 percent chance of surviving” before transferring Giffords to Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston, where her new neurosurgeon said she “looked spectacular.” Giffords’ friends and staffers, optimistic about her recovery, have contributed to the perception that she’ll soon be completely better. Daniel Hernandez, the intern who rushed to her side during the shooting, said he’d had several “lengthy” conversations with his boss, and Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada said Giffords is “running a campaign from the hospital.”

Dr. Gerard Francisco, the physiatrist in charge of Giffords’ medical team, says he is quite pleased with his patient’s progress, although he acknowledges that outsiders, especially the media, might be misinterpreting what that might be in this situation. “Some people will expect changes to be big,” says Francisco. “I’m happy with small changes, as long as I see these changes every day.” Francisco says he aims for an optimized “new normal” for each patient. Music therapist Meagan Morrow, who is working with Giffords, seconds Francisco’s perspective: “After you have a brain injury, you are a different person. It doesn’t matter who you are.”

Giffords still doesn’t know the details of the shooting—though she now knows she was shot. Initially she thought she had been in a car accident, but as her husband read her his newspaper, she noticed he was skipping stories and tried to grab the paper from his hands. He decided then to tell her what had happened. But she still doesn’t know some parts of the story, like that among the dead were a 9-year-old girl, her beloved young staffer Gabe Zimmerman, and her friend Judge John Roll. “When she starts asking for more details, we’re going to tell her,” says Kelly. Giffords’ chief of staff, Pia Carusone, points out that Giffords isn’t able to speak at the level she wants yet, so “telling her something as tragic as this, without her being to formulate the exact, complex followup questions she wants to, is not fair.”