The question of how Gabrielle Giffords is doing and whether she'll stay in office or run for election again has been floating out there for awhile, without much specific detail of her plans or condition, but Giffords' chief of staff, Pia Carusone, offered more information to the Republic's E.J. Montini than has been made public previously yesterday:

Who is making the decisions for the congresswoman? Is it Giffords herself or her husband, family and staff?

“It's a combination,” Carusone said. “I've told her that we've been approached by every media outlet in the world, at this point, and that when she is ready there are plenty of options for how we do it. She does not want to do that right now. And that's understandable. For someone who takes her job seriously and has a good relationship with the press and knows how important that is, to feel anything less than 100 percent is daunting. Let alone to feel what she's feeling. A real struggle and challenge with communication.”

Is there a timetable established for deciding if she will remain in office?

“The only firm timetable is the legal timetable and that is May of 2012, when petitions are due for reelection,” Carusone said. “That's a firm timetable. Short of that, we'd love to know today what her life will be, what her quality of life will be, which will determine whether she'll be able to run for office and all sorts of other things involving her life. But we just don't know yet…We're about halfway through the process that is the most important time for recovery. Patients recover for the rest of their lives but it's the first 12 to 14 months that you make the biggest jumps… In the doctors minds it's not even close to when you begin to make the final prognosis for the quality of her life.”