WASHINGTON — From the critical moments after she suffered a gunshot wound to the head in January to her triumphant return to Congress last week for a vote on the debt limit deal, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords owes her recovery in no small part to veterans with similar injuries.
Doctors and rehabilitation specialists have learned a great deal from the treatment of traumatic brain injuries in combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. One in five veterans of those wars has suffered some form of traumatic brain injury, most commonly concussions from roadside bombs.
Yet veterans' health care doesn't consistently cover cognitive rehabilitation therapy, the same therapy that's helped Giffords and other well-known figures - such as Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota and ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff - get their lives back to normal after major brain traumas.
"If we fail to give people the tools they need to do that, then we've shut them out of society," said Susan Connors, the president of the Brain Injury Association of America.
BY CURTIS TATE
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