Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is released from Houston hospital
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was released Wednesday from the Houston hospital where she has been undergoing physical therapy for five months and will now continue her treatments at home, hospital officials announced.
“Congresswoman Giffords has shown clear, continuous improvement from the moment she arrived at TIRR five months ago,” Dr. Gerald Francisco, the chief medical officer at TIRR Memorial Hermann said in a statement. “We are very excited that she has reached the next phase of her rehabilitation and can begin outpatient treatment.”
Giffords will move into the home of her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, in the Houston suburb of League City. There, she will be cared for by a 24-hour home health provider and will commute to Memorial Hermann where Francisco will continue to oversee her rehabilitation.
Photos: Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Arizona
“Anyone who knows Gabby knows that she loves being outside,” Kelly said in a statement. “Living and working in a rehab facility for five months straight has been especially challenging for her. She will still go to TIRR each day but, from now on, when she finishes rehab, she will be with her family.”
Giffords was shot in the head in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson during a meeting with constituents on January 8. Six people were killed in the shooting by Jared Lee Loughner and 12 others wounded. Loughner has since been declared mentally incompetent to stand trial.
The bullet was removed at University Medical Center in Tucson. Giffords was lucky in that the bullet passed through only one hemisphere of her brain and apparently did not produce irreparable damage.
She was transferred to the Houston hospital on January 21 and has been recuperating there ever since. Her staff released smiling photos of Giffords last week showing a smiling, apparently well-recuperated woman. Friends have said that she now speaks in complete sentences and initiates conversations.
Photos: Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Arizona
thomas.maugh@latimes.com
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