Texas Medical Center preps for Giffords' arrival

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YNN's John Salazar filed the following video report.

The next stop in wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ road to recovery is in Texas.

Police say Giffords, D-Arizona, was shot in the forehead Jan. 8 when 22-year-old Jared Loughner opened fire at a Safeway grocery store during a meet-and-greet event with constituents called “Congress on your Corner.”

According to the Associated Press, she will leave the University Medical Center in Tucson around 9 a.m. Friday, then travel on a medical flight to Houston. Once in Texas, she will ride in an escorted ambulance to the Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston. The facilities are located in the heart of the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical district in the world.

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Giffords will first undergo evaluation at the Level 1 Trauma Center at Memorial Hermann. Doctors say she will then be transported to The Institute of Rehabilitation and Research , or TIRR, where she will have to relearn all motor skills, including how to walk and speak.

The TMC sprawls over 30 million square feet in Downtown Houston and is the equivalent in size to the 12th largest business district in the United States, according to figures from TMC.

The medical complex employs over 93,000 people and sees six million patients every year. Medical journals have rated TMC among the top five medical centers in the country.

Apart from the TMC’s impressive facts and figures, other reasons factored into Giffords' decision to seek recovery in Texas. During a press conference in Tucson Thursday, the congresswoman’s husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, said that the decision to move his wife to Houston was based on the facility’s credentials to treat head trauma patients, as well as TMC’s proximity to both Tucson and the NASA headquarters.

Representatives with TMC say a press conference is in the works for Friday at which an update on Giffords’ treatment will be made public.

On Thursday, Loughner was indicted by a grand jury for attempting to assassinate Giffords and trying to kill two of her aides. Six people died and 12 were injured in the incident.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.