As a paramedic who used to work in Tucson (a quarter century ago), I
know the UA Trauma Center very well. Without question, it's the best
place Gabby Giffords and her colleagues could have been taken.
From the shooting till she arrived at UA was 37 minutes, a remarkable
scene time given 6 dead and 13 wounded (I think I have those numbers
correct.) My mom, who lives in Gabby's district, says the doctor's are
"cautiously optimistic." Gabby is responsive to pain, squeezing
fingers and so on, and the bullet to her head went in and out CLEANLY
without doing the damage which it could have. The good news in all
this seems to be that the shooter (my opinion, purely from what I've
read so far; I could well be wrong) wasn't using hollow-point bullets
(which expand dramatically on contact.) If he had been, I assure you
there'd be even more dead and that a head shot would have been fatal.
People in Tucson are in shock. Mom says she had 15+ calls yesterday
from around the country, and 10 today. Everyone is just sitting there,
stunned, unable to think of anything else. The little girl who was
killed was only nine years old; she was there as a reward for winning
a class election in her own grade. She was all excited because she was
going to get to hang out with Gaby and see how government works in
real life...
Tucson is in shock.
Gaby and a number of others, continue to fight for their lives.
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