the congresswoman is beginning to perform more complex functions. what kind of functions are they talking about? well, we ve talked a lot about following a simple command like raise two fingers or something like that. when you get more complicated you may ask somebody to either do something simultaneously, for example, so hold up two fingers and wiggle your toes at the same time. you might have them touch a body part, so touch your nose with your fingers, or you might have them repeat it. so take your fingers, tap it on the bed twice in a row. that gives an idea of not just hearing you but they re able to do more complicated motor functions. that s what they re testing. they re talking about removing the breelthing tube over the next couple of days. how will that affect the recovery? that s going to be a big step. you know, part of the reason the breathing tube is in now, as you know, the machine s not really giving breathes, this is more to protect the airway when they re worrie
part, so touch your nose with your fingers, or you might have them repeat it. so take your fingers, tap it on the bed twice in a row. that gives an idea of not just hearing you but they re able to do more complicated motor functions. that s what they re testing. they re talking about removing the breathing tube over the next couple of days. how will that affect the recovery? that s going to be a big step. you know, part of the reason the breathing tube is in now, as you know, the machine s not really giving breathes, this is more to protect the airway when they re worried about their sedation levels, they want to protect their airway, make sure they don t aspirate, for example. they re going to be able to test speech when the tube is out. obviously they can t test it, she can t talk. so that s going to be a big day, get that tube out, and say, you know, to say, say your name for me. if she says gabby giffords, that s going to be the similar sort of testing as far as motor commands,
a stroke and we don t have all the information about exactly what happened to him, but sort of when you generally speaking you can have bleeding within the brain and that can be caused by some problem like an aneurysm, something that his father had back in 1988, or you could have something that actually causes a lack of blood flow to the brain, if you take a look at this animation here, a little blood clot, for example, can come from somewhere in the body, gradually travel all the way up to the brain, and start to block blood flow to the brain and, again, that can cause strokelike symptoms. in this case, it is important to point out that from the information we re gathering that he did have some sort of symptoms that were obviously concerning for stroke, but then that they went away. his motor functions were normal and his speech is normal, sensation, all that from what we re hearing, that may classify this more as a transient aschemic attack, a tia, a stroke is something more permanen