Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in an apparent assassination attempt last week, could be ready to have her breathing tube removed Friday, according to husband Mark Kelly.
Kelly told CNN that his wife has made major progress since Saturday’s mass shooting rampage. In addition to being able to sit up, move her arms and legs, and open her eyes, Gifford appears to have an awareness of her surroundings, Kelly said.
When President Barack Obama visited the wounded Giffords in the hospital Wednesday, she seemed to recognize that he was there, Kelly said.
“I think she did know … though, I think she was trying to figure out what he was doing there,” Kelly told CNN in his first interview since the shooting.
Kelly added that his wife’s breathing tube could be removed Friday.
Doctors have expressed confidence in Giffords’s recovery. Dr. Peter Rhee, trauma chief at the University of Arizona Medical Center and a former combat surgeon, said Tuesday that Giffords has a “101 percent chance” of survival.
“I do think about her neurological function, and it is just too early to tell what that will be,” Kelly said.
Dr. Randall Friese, a trauma surgeon, told CNN about Giffords’s first moments in the hospital.
“My first response was I grabbed her hand, leaned into her and said ‘Ms. Giffords, you’re in the hospital, we’re going to care for you, please squeeze my hand’ and she did,” Friese said. “I got the impression that she was trying to communicate but was frustrated by the fact that she couldn’t communicate.”