At recent meetings of my stroke wives club -- an exclusive group you don't want to join, made up of women whose husbands have suffered left-brain strokes -- we've been shaking our heads ruefully at the relentlessly upbeat reports of Gabrielle Giffords' recovery.
The Arizona congresswoman was shown most recently smiling lopsidedly while hanging onto an aide's arm, having briefly returned to Congress for the budget vote.
She's being called "heroic" and "miraculous," and certainly that's true, although no more true than it is of the thousands of others, such as our spouses, who struggle daily to recover from brain injury -- and with a lot less help, money and media applause than Giffords has enjoyed.
Of course, after severe brain injury, any progress is good progress, and it's heartening to read that Giffords is saying a few words and starting to walk. But that doesn't mean she'll return to Congress. In all likelihood, the damage to her brain is just too great.
Left-hemisphere brain damage causes difficulty speaking and understanding speech; difficulty reading; decreased problem-solving ability, and diminished long-term planning. That kind of defines a congressperson's job, doesn't it?
If you read closely, of course, you'll find hints that her doctors are not uniformly optimistic about Giffords resuming political life. In April, her rehab doctor told the Houston Chronicle, "Our goal is to try to bring the person back to where she was. Sometimes we're successful, many times we're not."
Nevertheless, the majority of media reports are full of Pollyanna platitudes from physicians who have never ever seen Giffords.
Take this remark made to FoxNews.com by Dr. Raj Narayan, chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.: "Without examining her it is difficult to tell, but I would think that she would be able to return."