Mary Jo Buttafuoco Has Felt Gabrielle Giffords' Pain

LAS VEGAS -- The nation's second most famous female survivor of a gunshot to the head was both inspired and dubious when President Barack Obama proclaimed last week that U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had opened her eyes and "she knows we are here."

Mary Jo Buttafuoco had suffered a similar fate as the three-term congresswoman, and she was proud of the president for using the memorial service in Tucson, Ariz., to rally Americans to become better people.

Still, Buttafuoco recalled to AOL News the hazy and confusing first few days in 1992 after her husband's teenage lover shot her on her Long Island, N.Y., stoop. From that experience, she suspects it was much too soon for Giffords to have had any idea what happened to her or the others in that Tucson parking lot on Jan. 8.

"She opened her eyes, and that's wonderful," said Buttafuoco, 55, who now lives in Las Vegas with her longtime boyfriend, a print shop manager. "She's tracking, she's following, which is good. But as of that fourth day, she's probably still wondering what's going on. I know for a fact, I was told I would do commands. I have no memory of it. I don't know that right now she's doing thing consciously. But the more stuff you can do, the less the brain damage will be."

Buttafuoco was shot in the face by 17-year-old Amy Fisher. Buttafuoco divorced her straying husband, Joey, in 2003 and last year published a memoir in 2009 titled "Getting It Through My Thick Skull." The sordid scenario of a teenage girl shooting her lover's wife, especially in a New York suburb, became a tabloid sensation that spawned three top-rated TV movies.

Now, the tragedy outside a Tucson supermarket, where six people were killed and 13 wounded in the assassination attempt on Giffords, has brought Buttafuoco back into the media spotlight. This time, however, she believes, it's for the right reasons.

"I think the media says, 'You know, they say only 10 percent of people who get shot in the head survive and who do we know who's been shot in the head,' and my name comes up and they say, 'She's alive, she wrote a book,'" said Buttafuoco, who appeared last week on Fox News, HLN and Vegas' local Fox affiliate.

"Finally, after 18½ years, they're finally talking about what they should've been talking about all along, which is being shot in the head. They're calling [Giffords'] survival a miracle, and that's what I was, a miracle."

The two shootings, of course, are different.

Fisher's bullet did not go through Buttafuoco's brain, as the one that wounded Giffords did. Buttafuoco today is deaf in her right ear, paralyzed on the right side of her face and still suffers constant pain in her head, in part because the bullet remains lodged too close to her spine for surgeons to remove it. Otherwise, she's as physically fit as ever, a sunny person with blond bangs who travels the nation sharing her story as a motivational speaker.

Still, Buttafuoco is in a better position than most to understand what Giffords is going through now and the road to recovery she faces. A shooting victim's memory likely stops when the shooting began, Buttafuoco said, so Giffords is not likely to be issuing inspirational messages such as thumbs-up signs that would indicate she understands the broader context of the moment.

"As you start to come out of this quiet cocoon you're in, the pain is so intense," she said. "You want to die, it hurts so bad. Every hour you're waiting to push that button for that dose of morphine or whatever."

Odds are, Giffords may not yet even comprehend that she was shot. Buttafuoco said doctors told her they repeatedly told her she had been shot in those first several days, but it didn't register even days after she opened her eyes and was responding to commands. When she was finally able to communicate, it was by writing, and her first sentence was, "Was I shot?"

"Oh, just wait till she really understands the depth of this, that other people were killed. She's going to be devastated," Buttafuoco said. "It's sad, because she didn't do anything wrong. It's this deranged person."

Buttafuoco remained in the hospital for several weeks and then spent years in daily physical and rehabilitative therapy. She had a dozen surgeries to alleviate the pain and now says it generally feels as if she's got an unremovable impacted wisdom tooth.

She feels a kindred spirit with Giffords and follows news of her progress because "it's so devastating and it's going to take such a long time."

When she was shot, Buttafuoco was a housewife with teenage kids. She hopes the congresswoman will be able to resume her job.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful? Wouldn't it be amazing?" Buttafuoco said. "Wouldn't it be so uplifting to see her go back and continue to do her duties. We don't know. We know she can move, but what about cognitively? If she starts to talk and they can hold up a picture and say, 'What is this?' then we'll have some idea. I hope so. It would be wonderful."