Before we start the show, we want to give you a heads up that there are mentions of sexual

assault and other heavy content in this episode.

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

one afternoon and I remember sitting on the screened in Portion explaining to my family

that I just wasn't feeling well.

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 and it was pretty clear that I had contracted

the virus.

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 she

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 that started and when I was real little and going through

a lot of hospital stays and I would hear the doctors telling my parents to let me go.

Just let her go.

You've got another child.

When I was born they gave me the expectancy of four to eight years to live.

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