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It was 1952 and I was 7 years old and I had been feeling a little bit warm and feverish.

By the next morning, my dad came in and said,

why are you still in bed?

It's past the time you usually get up. And I said, I don't think I can get out of bed. Within about 24

hours I had been hospitalized. I was born in 1965. I'm a twin and my mom knew she was having my twin. She did not

know she was having me.

She had my sister at home and kind of went about her business because that's what you did back in the day.

And later on got sick and went back into

labor and she didn't know what was happening and so she got herself to the hospital

and I was born weighing three pounds and almost died at birth.

I spent the first few years of my life pretty much in and out of hospitals and clinics. I had eye

surgeries and seizures had started and when I was real little and going through you

know a lot of hospital stays and I would hear the doctors telling

my parents to let me go. Just let her go. You got another child. When I was born, they gave me the expectancy of four to eight years to live.

I was diagnosed with osteogenesis and perfecta which the lay person may know as

bread-a-bone disease. My grandmother raised me from birth she would always tell me how children like me,

quote-unquote-to-disabled folks, then go to school, particularly here in

...