by JENNIFER MEDINA
TUCSON — Just three days after a bullet passed through Representative
Gabrielle Giffords’s brain, and one day before the president was scheduled to come here to address the
shooting rampage in which she was wounded, doctors said Tuesday that Ms. Giffords’s chances of survival were certain. She is able to breathe on her own, although she remains on a ventilator as a precaution.
What her recovery will look like, however, and how long it will take remain unclear.
“She has a 101 percent chance of survival,” said Dr. Peter Rhee the director of medical trauma at the University Medical Center, where Ms. Giffords is being treated. “I can’t tell whether she’s going to be in a vegetative state. I hope that she’s not and I don’t think she will be in a vegetative state, but I know that she’s not going to die.”
President Obama will deliver a speech here Wednesday evening at a memorial service for the victims of the attack. His aides said he would focus on the theme of service to country and avoid the debate about whether the state’s political climate might have played a role in the tragedy.
Instead, Mr. Obama, who was still working with his speechwriters on Tuesday, will call for unity among Americans, while trying to hold up the lives of the victims, including their service to government, as an example to all Americans. He will share some anecdotes about the victims from private phone calls he has made to the families, aides said.
Meanwhile, across Tucson, there was a flurry of efforts to address the psychological effects of Saturday morning’s shootings, which left six dead and 14 wounded. Two churches held memorial services Tuesday night, drawing large crowds.
In Phoenix, the State Legislature quickly passed an emergency law to block a controversial church that protests outside funerals from getting too close to the services planned in Tucson.
The measure, which keeps protesters 300 feet back from funerals, is intended to head off members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, who have praised the shooting and plan to picket the funeral on Thursday of
Christina Green, a 9-year-old victim, and a service on Friday for Judge
John M. Roll of Federal District Court.
“I was physically sick when I heard this,” said State Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who sponsored the measure. “Then I decided to do something. Nothing happens in one day in politics, but this did. This tragedy is nonpartisan. It’s human.”
Community volunteers were mobilizing to plan their own street-side memorial service to counter the protesters, with some planning to wear angel wings.
At the hospital, Ms. Giffords’s doctors said the outcome could have been far worse. They said she had done remarkably well so far. But they cautioned that there was little more they could do medically to help her improve.
Over the last several days, Ms. Giffords has repeatedly given nonverbal responses to her doctors’ commands, they said, and CAT scan X-rays have shown that there is no swelling, which continues to be the most serious threat. So far, doctors said, she has shown only slight movement on the right side of her body, raising questions about her functional neurological status. Doctors again declined to give some specific details about Ms. Giffords.
“This is the phase of the care where it’s so much up to her,” said Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., the hospital’s chief of neurosurgery, during a news conference Tuesday morning. “As long as we don’t backslide and as long as she holds her own, that’s good. That keeps us hopeful. But we have to play this really according to her timeline, not ours.”
Dr. Lemole said Ms. Giffords would remain connected to a ventilator as a precaution, to prevent pneumonia or infections in her windpipe. But because she cannot talk it is so far not possible for doctors to assess more complex brain functions.
For the last three days, Ms. Giffords has repeatedly gripped hands or flashed a finger after doctors prompted her. Dr. Rhee said Ms. Giffords appeared to be responding without prompts now, repeatedly flashing a thumbs-up at doctors and her husband, Mark Kelly, an astronaut.
“She has no right to look this good, and she does,” Dr. Lemole said.
Five other victims remained in the hospital on Tuesday, including Suzi Hileman, who had taken 9-year-old Christina Green to the event Saturday. Ms. Hileman is expected to recover from at least three gunshot wounds and a shattered hip. The most difficult path ahead will be grappling with the emotions, and guilt, over Christina’s death, her husband, Bill Hileman, said Tuesday.
Several times in the last three days, Mr. Hileman said, his wife has screamed “Christina! Christina!” as though she were having a flashback. “She keeps talking about how they had this incredibly tight grip on each other” when the shots began, he said. “She told me that they were almost breaking each other’s hands.”
Reporting was contributed by Lawrence K. Altman and Helene Cooper in Washington and Marc Lacey, Ford Burkhart, Ron Nixon, Lisa Button, Carli Brosseau, Will Ferguson and Clayton Norman in Tucson.
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