Oceanside native recovering from Tucson shooting
Months after incident, Suzi Hileman's life is beginning to return to normal
On Jan. 8, Oceanside native Suzi Annis Hileman was shot three times in front of a supermarket in Tucson, Ariz., when she brought her young friend, 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, to meet Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Christina died. And now Hileman, six months later, is continuing to mend, her life starting to return to normal while she works to honor the memory of her lost friend.
“I’m still kind of lumbering like Popeye the Sailor Man,” Hileman said in a phone interview with the Herald as she walked around her home in Tucson (which, she pointed out, she was not able to do six months ago). “But I’m better every day. It’s not a linear process that goes only in one direction. Some times are easier than others.”
A journey
Hileman was shot twice in the chest and once in the hip, and her hip bone was shattered. She underwent reconstructive surgery, and doctors tell her that her hip is fully healed. She is now working on the difficult process of physical rehabilitation.
A former social worker at a rehabilitation clinic in Chicago, where she used to live with her husband Bill, Hileman is no stranger to the aches and pains that come with the process. However, she said she never really understood what the patients at the center were going through.
“I saw [how difficult it was], and I pooh-poohed it, and I feel like I should call every one of the patients I talked to and say, ‘I’m sorry. I should not have blown you off. I should have been more sympathetic,’” she said. “But I was not, and now I’m getting my comeuppance.”
Hileman, a master gardener, is happy that she is finally able to get her hands dirty again. Getting down on the ground “is a challenge,” she said. For now she is using pots and containers around her house — not her favorite method, but a start.
When she was injured, doctors told her that it would be a year or so before she was fully recovered. After her surgery, her hip could support no weight for three months. The way she got through it, she said, was by imagining that once she could walk again, she would use a cane for a few days and then be good as new. However, she has come to the unhappy realization that things won’t work out that way, and that her rehabilitation will take a full year.
