But she had to make a decision.

"I had to give the order of what I wanted to be saved," she said. "So I said my face first, because you couldn't look at me and tell I'm deaf or blind. My hearing second, because I still want to hear and sing and have my speech. And then my balance. So they took my balance completely from the right."

But after three years of physical therapy to teach her brain how to compensate for the loss of balance, "mostly everything else is back. I can hear and see and I can speak," she said. "So I am blessed."

When you meet her now, it's hard now to tell anything was ever wrong with T-Boz.

"I still have a crooked smile and just certain things I deal with, but I'll take all of that to be back here and be Chase's mother," she said.

Predictions of her lifespan are still pessimistic, but her optimism rejects them.

"Now they're saying 45, and I plan to be talking to y'all at 56," she said. "I'd rather take over the disease than let it take over me. Let's put it that way."

T-Boz has a lot left to do. This year is the 20th anniversary of when she teamed with Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas as TLC.

VH1 is producing a bio-pic about them, which means T-Boz is back in the studio working on the soundtrack.

"It's going to be hard to see who can dance like us," she said. "I don't even think I could do me again. Could I do T-Boz again the way I did it?"

The reunited group -- with a replacement for Lopes, who died in a 2002 auto accident in Honduras -- will also tour to support the release of a new album, which includes two new singles.

And T-Boz has her own song out called "Champion," with the profits going to a charity for children with blood disorders.

"There's a lot of people who have been going through what I went through and I want to help whoever I can," she said. "I want to share my story because I think God spared me for a reason. I think that I'm supposed do something with it."