Release Nears for Giffords
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords could leave her Tucson hospital within weeks or even days as she continues to recover from the shooting here nine days ago, longchamp sale her doctors said Monday. Her family has begun to search for a rehabilitation center for the congresswoman to continue her treatment, doctors said. "The family is looking at all their resources. They have the whole country available," G. Michael Lemole Jr., Ms. Giffords's neurosurgeon, said at a news conference Monday. Meanwhile, federal officials are bracing for a possible legal battle to stop Ms. Giffords's accused shooter, Jared Loughner, from being tried outside of Arizona. Federal officials said Monday that they would fight to keep his trial in the state. Mr. Loughner is being held in a federal detention facility near Phoenix after being charged in the Jan. 8 rampage at a Tucson supermarket that left six dead and 14 injured, including Ms. Giffords. Doctors said the plans now underway for what is expected to be a long rehabilitation process amount to another testament to how rapidly and well Ms. Giffords is healing from a gunshot wound to the head. Doctors have called her survival and recovery miraculous. On Monday, Ms. Giffords was recovering from surgery over the weekend to repair her right eye socket, which was damaged in the shooting. The bullet entered the left side of Ms. Giffords's brain, creating pressure that pushed bone fragments into her right eye, doctors said. Surgeons they repaired the right socket with titanium metal mesh. That eye remains swollen as it heals, they said. Ms. Giffords's left eye, apparently undamaged in the attack, "is doing great," said Lynn Polonski, an eye surgeon who operated on her right eye. Doctors had performed emergency surgery earlier in the week to relieve pressure on the eye, but didn't want to do the complete surgery for fear of putting too much stress on Ms. Giffords. Dr. Polonski said it is unclear how much vision Ms. Giffords has now, or will have. "We think her perception is there. The optic nerves look good," Dr. Polonski said in an interview after the conference. "We have to wait until she can tell us." Doctors said the level of her cognitive abilities remains unclear, Air Max 2011 but over the past week she has responded to more complex commands and can track movement with at least one eye, they said. Ms. Giffords's husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, told her doctors that she has smiled at him, suggesting a higher level of awareness. Dr. Lemole said some moves Ms. Giffords has made, like rubbing her husband's neck, "imply she is recognizing him" and suggest "all those higher cognitive levels of function are somewhat preserved." But her doctors also warned that inferring too much from such actions is highly speculative at this early stage. Ms. Giffords was unhooked from a ventilator this weekend and upgraded to serious from critical condition. Doctors removed the breathing tube from her mouth and throat and replaced it with a tube directly into her windpipe. Ms. Giffords is not able to vocalize with the tube in place, doctors said. Doctors can replace the tube in her windpipe with another tube that would allow her to speak when and if she attempts to mouth words, they said. So far, however, she has made no attempt to speak or to communicate in writing. Ms. Giffords remains in the intensive care unit of Tucson's University Medical Center. Two other shooting victims remain hospitalized and in good condition, doctors said. Federal and local investigators, meanwhile, spent the weekend preparing their case for an expected indictment of Mr. Loughner, who has been charged with two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and a count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress. Once an indictment comes in the next few weeks, federal officials said, one of the first pre-trial fights expected would be over where to try Mr. Loughner. Defense attorneys will likely seek to move the trial out of Tucson and Arizona, given the notoriety of the case and concerns over whether Mr. Loughner can receive a fair trial. Mark Fleming, an attorney for Mr. Loughner, declined to comment. Such motions aren't routinely granted. But in other similar highly publicized cases, notably the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, federal judges have agreed to move trial venues. On Monday, Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that federal prosecutors "intend to oppose any motions to move the trial. The trial belongs in Arizona." All federal judges in Arizona have been recused from the case because the district's chief judge John Roll was among those Mr. Loughner is accused of killing. A San Diego-based federal judge, Larry Burns, has been appointed to oversee the case for now. If Judge Burns remains as the judge on the case, one likely option could be to move the case to his district. But no such decision is imminent, according to U.S. officials. In Tucson, residents are trying to resume regular life. Hordes of reporters that had invaded the city had thinned by Monday. The Safeway supermarket where the shooting occurred, which is just north of the city, re-opened over the weekend with permission from investigators. On Saturday Sabrina Lara, 8 years old, came with her grandmother and gently laid down a bouquet festooned with a glittery red heart. They said a prayer for U.S. District Judge John Roll and 9-year-old Christina Green, who were both killed. Dawn Gallagher, Gucci handbags who has worked at the store since it opened in 1992 and was there the day of the shooting, said she perspired and felt nauseous Saturday morning as she approached the parking lot. But she felt better once she saw her co-workers and hugged them. Safeway employees were thrust by fate into the role of first-aid providers who applied pressure to wounds and tended to victims before first responders arrived. "We just did the best that we could," said store manager Marian Huber on Saturday.