Gabrielle Giffords before the shooting

According to the Houston Chronicle, e-mails sent by Gabrielle Gifford’s mother Gloria to friends tell how the Congresswoman has continued to surprise doctors and staff "due to the "amazing things that have happened. From a kind of limp noodle when you last saw her, she's alert, sits up straight with good posture ... and is working very hard," Giffords wrote last week. She later added, "As you may expect, little Miss overachiever is healing very fast."

Giffords, who lives in Tucson, Arizona, but has been in Houston for much of her daughter's rehab, wrote that it was music therapy that "really flipped the switch." She mouthed Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and I Can't Give You Anything But Love as friends provided keyboards and chorus. She also lip-synced Happy Birthday to You in a videotape for her husband, League City astronaut Mark Kelly. Giffords wrote that they were planning to do Deep in the Heart of Texas next.

Giffords wrote most enthusiastically about the sing-alongs, comparing the scenes to a tent show revival with everyone ‘clapping and hooting’ and ‘an Andy Hardy movie, where (Mickey) Rooney declares my dad's got a barn ... let's put on a show.’ Singing is a standard technique used with brain-injury patients having trouble putting several words together, Riggs said.

Francisco said first words are a milestone for brain-injury patients but cautioned that there is no one predictor of rehab success. Rayna Boh- mann, a speech pathologist at Baylor College of Medicine and Ben Taub General Hospital, said she has seen patients who did not speak for a year but then recovered; others spoke the day after brain trauma but years later could not manage routine tasks.” For the full story see http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7427529.html