Giffords to have surgery while husband is in space (AP)

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 1:01 AM By dwi

HOUSTON – Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' feat isn't speed downbound while her traveler economise speeds around the Earth.

Giffords module participate surgery Wednesday so doctors can change a example of her skull with a impressible implant, added hortative travel since the Arizona legislator was effort in the nous more than quaternary months ago.

The surgery — coming just days after Giffords cosmopolitan to Florida to check her husband, Mark Kelly, start into expanse — was confirmed to The Associated Press by digit people old with the congresswoman's care. They spoke on condition of obscurity because the aggregation has not officially been released.

Doctors distant a example of Giffords' skull to earmark room for mentality symptom shortly after a would-be assassin effort her in the nous Jan. 8, critically wounding her, killing six people and injuring 12 others at a semipolitical event in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz.

The three-term Democratic legislator has been wearing a helmet fancy with an Arizona land flag. Doctors said when she arrived in metropolis in New Jan they hoped to do the cranial surgery in May.

Dr. Richard Riggs, chair of fleshly medicine and rehabilitation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said the surgery to place the impressible pass is relatively simple. Recovery is short — a period or digit at the most — and is mostly from the personalty of anesthesia, he said.

"This gives her calibre of chronicle because she won't have to worry about the helmet and protection when agitated around," said Riggs, who is not participating in Giffords' care.

The pass is settled under the scalp, allowing material to grow on crowning so it is not visible. Riggs said the example of skull that doctors distant likely was septic or broken by the missile that pierced the mitt side of Giffords' brain. That would attain the skull unfit to be reattached, which is ground doctors would ingest an implant, Riggs said.

Giffords' chief of staff, Pia Carusone, declined to comment on whether Giffords would participate the surgery on Wednesday. Giffords' doctors do not comment on her condition without support from her family.

Giffords returned to metropolis and rehab New weekday after watching her husband's shuttle start in Florida. When Endeavour's five Americans and digit European got off the ground Monday, Giffords watched in private from a wheelchair on the roof of the start control edifice and remarked, "good stuff, good stuff," according to her staff.

That Giffords would check the shuttle start seemed tall a little more than quaternary months ago. And some patients don't have this identify of surgery until after they are free from the hospital.

Her doctors have said she has made remarkable advancement in what module be a daylong recovery.

The next travel module be to promulgation her from the hospital. Then she module move speech, occupational and fleshly therapy at an outpatient clinic.


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