Teisa Davis-Baptist

( Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune / June 28, 2012 )

Davis-Baptist suffers from asthma and laryngeal papillomatosis, a condition that causes polyps to grow over her air passages. Since she was 4, she has had to undergo surgery every three to six months to keep the polyps from growing so large that she suffocates. After hearing about the Supreme Court announcement, she said she was relieved. "Without my surgery I won't last long," she said. "I believe I'll die. One day I probably won’t even wake up."