00:00A painful road to recovery.
00:04May Shidiak has a face known to millions of television viewers.
00:09A photogenic, influential face.
00:17A Barbara Walters of news in the Middle East.
00:20A celebrity.
00:23Fashionable.
00:25Always opinionated.
00:27Often very controversial.
00:31But May Shidiak became the news six months ago in one murderous act.
00:38I heard a blast and I felt it at the same time.
00:44I was still awake.
00:46I saw like a black snow falling over me.
00:52A bomb ripped through her SUV.
00:55Against all odds though, she survived.
00:58Barely alive, May managed to crawl from the wreckage.
01:02Her hair ablaze in a fireball of flame and smoke.
01:06Her body cut to shreds.
01:08I saw my hand attached to my arm with a small piece of skin.
01:19So I hoped that they could save my hand.
01:23But the doctors could not save May's hand or half her arm.
01:28The bomb took most of the left leg too.
01:31May was badly scorched and peppered with shrapnel.
01:34I still have pieces of metal in the face near the cheek here.
01:40And all over my body.
01:44The Saudi prince, Walid bin Talal, a billionaire shareholder in the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation,
01:53flew May to France in his private jet.
01:56Putting much of the huge medical costs for his star talent.
02:02May is a woman of courage.
02:05Easy to like.
02:07With a powerful will to live.
02:09I have to do everything with just one leg or just one hand.
02:15And it's not always that easy.
02:18It's a kind of a new dance.
02:28May is learning to regain her mobility.
02:32At a special rehabilitation center outside Paris.
02:37It's putting so much pressure on me.
02:44He's making me crazy.
02:47Oh God.
02:52Defying the bomber with all the might she can muster.
02:56It's so painful over here.
02:58I imagine I have the enemy in front of me and I have to kick him.
03:06The enemy May claims is the Syrian regime.
03:14Lebanon's powerful neighbor.
03:16Taking revenge, she claims, on its critics and foes like her.
03:21No proof.
03:23Just our guessing.
03:24But you know who is the enemy in Lebanon for the time being.
03:29It's Syria and we were people talking against Syria.
03:37Syria was the subject of May's last show before her car blew up.
03:42The topic?
03:43A string of assassinations of prominent Syrian critics in Lebanon.
03:47In hospital, she's given moral support by Saad Hariri.
03:52Son of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
03:56Who died last year in a still unsolved bomb attack.
04:00And Gibran Twaini, another outspoken critic of Syria, became yet another bomb victim when he was killed.
04:08Just two days after this bedside visit.
04:12But May is rising from tragedy, determined to walk and broadcast again.
04:21She's unapologetic for her hard-hitting views and grits her teeth at every challenge.
04:30People who will see this will consider it very easy, but it is not, I swear.
04:35It looks so stupid, but I have to make a lot of effort.
04:42Here.
04:45Her would-be killers could strike again, but that won't change her politics when she goes back on air.
04:52Never.
04:53It won't be me.
04:55It won't be me.
04:57I'm a fighter.
05:00But you can't always be so upbeat.
05:03There must be times when you feel despair.
05:07Yes, of course.
05:08There is time when I feel despair.
05:10There's time when I cry.
05:13When I feel pain.
05:16A lot of pain.
05:18This is my fifth month of treatment.
05:21I have my own way of doing things.
05:23She is trying to master the difficult technique of controlling this prosthetic hand.
05:28Through the stump of her arm.
05:31The easiest way for me is to feel that I still have my own fingers.
05:36And I'm opening and closing them.
05:39Like...
05:45So, this is the way of doing things.
05:47My own way.
05:48I don't know if it's the only way.
05:53This is May Shidiak's high-tech artificial leg.
05:57It'll look much more lifelike when finished.
06:00But May wants to walk as soon as she possibly can on these five-inch high heels.
06:06She wants absolutely to walk with that.
06:10She's very, very determined to that.
06:14And we have to deal with that.
06:16And I hope we'll find a solution.
06:18But I'm not sure it will be really possible.
06:20But May says she won't give up easily.
06:23So, I would like to be able to put high heels with my long dresses.
06:27And so...
06:30This is it.
06:32Stubborn, independent and focused is how May's family describe her unbending attitude.
06:39This is her character.
06:40She will not change.
06:41She is our pride.
06:42She is a strong fighter.
06:43She is a survivor.
06:44And May, I don't think she will change.
06:45This is May.
06:46The Institute helps some 2,000 amputees each year.
07:00Amid this environment of grim determination, May Shidiak's case has won her friends and recognition.
07:07She gives us energy to face our difficulties now in this hospital.
07:16She's an example for us.
07:20It's agonizing to watch, but May's new body parts are starting to work.
07:26So, I've done enough efforts.
07:40This is my new hand.
07:42One of my new hands.
07:44This is my electric one.
07:47But it doesn't look much like my own hand, but it's functional.
07:51She is a Maronite Catholic learning more day by agonizing day.
08:02But sometimes in May's darkest moments, she thinks death might have been preferable to life.
08:09Not now though, as she visits the center of Paris.
08:16Wanting to look and feel like the woman she was.
08:28I will feel so happy at that time, but I think things have changed.
08:33I won't be the same again, even if I want to.
08:37Sometimes, she says, the exercises feel like climbing mountains.
08:44Triumphant when a summit is scaled.
08:47Hey!
08:48It's the first time I do it.
08:52Really?
08:53Yeah.
08:54And not the last.
08:56I think some angels are protecting me.
09:00I hope they will keep on doing it.
09:02Every single step of her difficult way.
09:09Brent Sadler, CNN, Valentin, France.
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