Music 'flips switch' for shot congresswoman
February 27th 2011 21:07
HOUSTON: Just seven weeks ago a would-be assassin left Gabrielle Giffords for dead after shooting her at point-blank range outside a shopping centre in Arizona.
But the US congresswoman not only survived the bullet through her brain but is now delighting family, friends and doctors with her astonishing recovery, thanks partly to a pioneering music therapy technique that is helping her regain her faculties.
A nursery rhyme used to sing children to sleep has played a key role in bringing her back to life as she learns to talk and, eventually, walk again.
Advertisement: Story continues below When Ms Giffords, 40, mouthed Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as her music therapist Maegan Morrow played a guitar, it brought tears to the eyes of those gathered in her room at The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research in Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston.
She has progressed to singing along to jazz and rock classics such as I Can't Give You Anything But Love, recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, and American Pie.
Ms Giffords was shot on January 8 by Jared Loughner, 22. He opened fire on the politician and went on to kill six and injure 12 others at a meeting in Tucson.
Initial reports suggested Ms Giffords had died, and even when it was later confirmed she had survived, it was widely presumed she would spend the rest of her life in a vegetative state. She has confounded all expectations, partly through sheer willpower. She has taken her first few steps, pushing a shopping trolley aided by her therapists and spoken her first words.
Her husband, Mark Kelly, an astronaut, hopes that in April she will travel to Florida to see the blast-off of the final space shuttle mission under his command from Cape Canaveral. Ms Giffords's mother, Gloria, has told friends that her daughter's transformation from a ''limp noodle'' after the attack owes much to music sessions where family and friends ''clap and hoot'' as chorus and band. The neurologic music therapy - an integral part of her intensive daily routine of physical, occupational and speech therapy - ''really flipped the switch'' for her daughter, she said.
The bullet punctured the left hemisphere of Ms Giffords's brain, the control centre for language and movement on her right side.
Telegraph, London
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