Former U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan remained in critical condition early Sunday after she was found floating unconscious in her swimming pool, authorities said. ``She's been awake off and on through the night, but she goes right to sleep,'' said Sheryln Gembol, a nursing supervisor at Brackenridge Hospital. ``We're trying to let her rest. ``They're going to be running some more tests throughout the day today. They know it was not a heart attack or a stroke, but as far as what made her unconscious in the pool, they're not sure,'' she added. Ms. Jordan, who rose to fame during the Watergate impeachment hearings, was found in the pool about noon Saturday by a woman who lives with her. Ms. Jordan, 52, was taken to the hospital by helicopter. Paramedics ``said she had a pulse, was trying to breathe and they were able to help her breathe en route to hospital,'' said hospital spokeswoman Carolyn Boyle. At a briefing late Saturday, a doctor said Ms. Jordan was being treated for fluid in her lungs but showed no signs of heart or brain dysfunction. ``She has full recovery of her intellectual functions. Her vital signs are much better,'' Dr. William Deaton said. Though she remained in critical condition, ``the capital `c' is not so big as when she got here.'' ``She has to heal her own lungs, which she will hopefully do,'' added Deaton, a lung specialist. He said Ms. Jordan apparently lost consciousness while swimming alone in the pool, for unknown reasons. A lack of oxygen then caused the cardiac arrest, he said. Ms. Jordan has had medical problems for several years and has used a wheelchair to get to her job on the faculty of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. Ms. Jordan has refused to discuss the illness, calling it ``a mobility problem'' and denying it was Lou Gehrig's disease or bone cancer. Deaton described it as a progressive loss of ``nerve function in her lower extremities'' similar to multiple sclerosis. In 1966, Ms. Jordan became the first black state senator in Texas. In 1972, she was the first Southern black elected to Congress since Reconstruction. She gained a national reputation during the House Judiciary Committee's 1974 hearings that ended with a vote to press impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon. She stirred television audiences when she declared, ``My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total.''
