One step at a time, Elizabeth Vonack is leaving her hearing behind.

"I’m deaf in my right ear and I'm going deaf in my left ear," the Kapolei woman said.

Her increasing hearing impairment is why Vonack sets her telephone ring so loud. It’s why she can't hear a wind chime even when it's just a few feet away.

"I look normal. I look completely normal. That doesn't mean I'm not disabled," she said.

Over the last year Vonack's been going deaf. She suffers from Meniere’s disease, an inner ear disorder. She reads lips and relies on her service dog, Lily.

"Once I stepped off the curb, she jumped in front of me, she backed me off. Had I taken another two steps the car would have hit me," she said.

Vonack said last week Tripler Army Medical Center’s emergency room turned her away when she was having an asthma attack. She said it’s because she had Lily with her.

"They wouldn't even let me stay in the waiting room," she said.

In a written response, Tripler said it's sensitive to people with disabilities, but hospital guidelines "impose an obligation on the owner of the service animal to assure the animal is properly identified."

Vonack, a military dependent, said she showed ER staff her service dog ID. But because Lily didn't have her service dog vest on, Vonack was kept outside the emergency room suffering from the asthma attack for three hours. She gave up and drove to Hickam Air Force base.

"It was stupid," she said. "What they did to me was telling me I couldn't use my hearing aid."

Service dog trainers say separating the animal from its handler is traumatic for both.

"A medical facility may exclude such an animal in very, very select circumstances," she said.

Tripler said it was following its rules. But Vonack said in an emergency the hospital should have made an exception.

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