Transcript of Preview: Gabby Giffords on Before & After with Lester Holt

I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges. Their stories are funny and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week, and who knows, you might just come away with your own glass half full.

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Hi, I'm Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the NBC News podcast, The Drink. This month I'm sipping green tea with the incomparable Harry Connick Jr., musician, actor, composer, author. We talk about how he got started playing for audiences in New Orleans at just 5 years old, and how a call from Rob Reiner to write music for When Harry Met Sally changed the course of his life. He also opens up about family, reflecting on losing his mom when he was only 13, how that loss has shaped him and inspired an orchestral piece and a book in her honor. It's all in this month's episode of The Drink. I hope you'll listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Lester Holt with a special preview of my new podcast, Before and After. In this week's episode, I sit down with Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman married to Senator Mark Kelly. Back in 2011, Gabby was shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a Tucson grocery store. She suffered a devastating brain injury that left her with partial paralysis and aphasia, a condition that sometimes makes it difficult to speak. But as I learned, Gabby still has a lot to say about her recovery, her gun safety organization Giffords, and her hope for the future. I can't believe we've never met.

No.

How is that?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

I wanted to meet you because I wanted to know what it's like being Gabby Giffords.

Funny, funny, funny. I'm Gabby Giffords. Yoga twice a week, French horns, Spanish lessons, biking, 2:40 for the gym, pool therapy, and I'm traveling 60% of the road.

Are we talking about an average day? Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah.

And how does it make you feel?

Love it. Love it. Love it. Yeah.

This is a point I think I want to bring in Emma Brown. Hi, Emma.

Hi.

You work with Gabby?

Yeah. The executive director of Giffords. Yeah.

Gabby has a condition called aphasia. Yep. Gabby, I'll turn it to you on that. What does aphasia mean for your life? How does it affect you?

Aphasia really sucks. The words are there in my brain. I just can't get them out. I love to talk. I'm Gabby. And I'm so quiet now.

I don't experience you as all that quiet in real life.

What, what, what, and chicken, chicken, chicken.

When Gabby was shot, she was in a coma for a few weeks. And when she woke up, those were the only 2 words that she could say.

Chicken, chicken.

And what. Yeah, the word what. No one knows why. No one knows why. But those were the only words that she could say. And she rebuilt her— Vocabulary from there.

Right after you were shot, I flew out to Arizona and I was anchoring the news from there.

Tonight from Tucson, the massacre that's left a nation stunned. 6 people are dead and a congresswoman fights for her life.

I'm sure you've been told this, that there was some erroneous reporting that you had died.

Oh, no way, Jose.

Yeah. How long before you realize What had happened and the extent of your injuries?

What is happening to me? What is happening to me?

Gabby will— and Senator Kelly will tell a story of after she had woken up, they hid the newspapers from her because it was too much to take in. And I think you walked into the bathroom, right, in the hospital? And cried.

Yeah.

And cried. And said to Mark, what is happening to me? You know, realizing what had happened and the extent of her injuries.

Did you understand how badly you were hurt?

Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yeah.

You have a tracheotomy scar.

Yes. The bullet—

Went through your head?

Yes.

I was thinking as I came here, all the shootings that happened after yours. There was Las Vegas, there was El Paso. And I think about the survivors, people like yourself, and how you managed to figure it out. And you put one foot in front of the other, and you take back what's yours.

Yeah.

Are you still recovering?

Yeah.

What's that look like?

A lot of homework. A lot of homework.

It sounds hard.

I'm tough.

Thanks for listening. Search Before and After with Lester Holt to hear the full episode Friday night on an all-new Dateline.

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How he survived to tell his story. An all-new Dateline, Friday night at 9/8c, only on NBC.