“I was premature, a seven-month baby. My mom said that I passed right after birth. My heart stopped, but they brought me back.

“I was in an incubator for 10 days. On the eighth day my heart stopped again, and they had to bring me back again. How long I was out both times, I don’t know. But I do know that lack of oxygen to the brain affects you.

“My hearing was damaged severely, along with my vision. I started wearing hearing aids at age 5. It was a body aid that I had to wear under my shirt. It was very uncomfortable. I hated that thing. I wore it until fifth grade when I got a behind-the-ear aid, which was kind of new technology at the time.

“Kids were tough on me. At school, they would push me down the stairs or slam my head against the wall. I got picked on a lot until I snapped one day and said, that’s it, no more. I got tired of having stomachaches from all the nerves.

“My hearing loss was severe at the time, but now it’s more profound. My right ear is about 95 percent gone as far as understanding. My left ear is about 90 percent gone. But I haven’t let it stop me.

“I guess I was destined to help other people. I’m a hearing health care practitioner. I’ve been in the business 41 years. I love what I’m doing. If you can change someone’s life just by hanging hearing aids on their ears or putting them in their ears, it’s amazing. It’s great to have that God-given talent to do that for another human being. It’s the greatest job in the world.”

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“By the time I was 21, I had my fourth child. I thought that was enough, so I wanted to get my tubes tied. But my doctor kept telling me, ‘You’re too young for that.’ Instead, he introduced me to Norplant, which was this birth control system where they insert little stems in your arm. He said, ‘It’s really good. It’s working great for people.’

“I had it done four weeks after my son was born. Within a week’s time, I started losing my vision. I would see something, but then all of a sudden it got much darker. I asked my mom why she turned off the lights. She said, ‘Lynnette, the lights are not off.’

“Then I was in the kitchen cooking one evening when my eyes just went totally black. It felt like somebody had put shades over my eyes. My mom took me to the doctor, and they told me I needed to go see a glaucoma specialist.

“The specialist confirmed it was glaucoma, but he couldn’t understand why it was so extreme in someone my age. I went to him five times. After having surgery and everything else, he still couldn’t figure out why the pressure in my right eye wouldn’t lower. That’s when I raised my arm and said, ‘Do you think this might be the problem?’ He said, ‘What is that?’ I said, ‘It’s birth control.’

“I told him that I felt like I started losing my sight once I got it. So he said, ‘My advice to you is go get it taken out, and come back to see me in two weeks.’ I went to the doctor’s office that same day to have it taken out. When I returned to the specialist he said, ‘Wow. Your pressure is so much lower, back to where it should have been from the get-go.’

“By then I had lost a good 80 percent vision in my right eye. Within a few years, it wiped out that eye totally to where I can only see light in front of me. And then it started taking away the peripheral vision in my left eye. Even with the stems out, I guess the medication itself was still in my system.

“It’s challenging, but I get by. Today is a good day. I can actually see you. Then I have other days where I see more blackness than anything. It comes and goes like that.

“But I thank God that the saying is true: When one sense goes, the other ones kick in. My memory is great. My hearing is excellent. I can hear two conversations going on at one time. And my sense of touch is wonderful. Sometimes I can touch money and tell you exactly what it is. So I’ve got that going for me.”

— Lynnette Hulett, 46

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• Being disabled doesn’t take away independence

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