Hearing-impaired mother of six begins medical school at UNT Health Fort Worth
Parents often tell their children, “You just have selective hearing.” For Nicole Everitt, that phrase wasn’t just a figure of speech—it was a reality.
Now, the mother of six and first-year medical student at UNT Health Fort Worth’s Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine is about to receive her first stethoscope—a specially equipped device that will connect to her hearing aids via Bluetooth.
Everitt, who was diagnosed with severe hearing loss in both ears at age 5, is one of 233 students in TCOM’s Class of 2028 receiving a stethoscope on July 23 through the school’s annual Stethoscope Program. The milestone event marks the beginning of their journey in medical education.
Everitt’s hearing loss wasn’t hereditary and wasn’t caused by illness or trauma—just an unexplained fluke. Thanks to hearing aids and speech therapy, she began to connect with the world of sound for the first time.
“I was falling behind in my language skills, and I was diagnosed at a school screening,” she said. “I didn’t have the cognizant awareness that something was not right, but I do remember the first time wearing my hearing aids at home and hearing the bathwater being turned on; the sound was so complex.”
Her educational journey wasn’t straightforward. Originally from Michigan, Everitt started college in Ohio in 2009 as a political science major. But after becoming a newlywed and pregnant with her first child, she made the difficulty decision to step back from school.
“I finished my sophomore year and had to step back and say, this isn’t working, it’s not up to the standard I should be at,” Everitt said. “Some of it was immaturity, and some of it was not understanding how hard it would be. Everyone goes to college, and I thought I would just figure it out, but that didn’t happen.”
Everitt family on Christmas
After moving to Arizona, her second child was born, and Everitt began reading medical literature for fun. Her newfound hobby quickly became something more than just a hobby; it became a passion.
“At first, it was just a thing I did for fun because it was mentally stimulating,” she said. “I was reading medical journals and doing research on all kinds of things.”
In 2016, Everitt’s husband got a job with the Carrollton Fire Department, and the family, which was now up to four kids, was headed to Texas.
While she was homeschooling her children, in her spare time, she was reading scientific journals, learning about everything from biofilm formation to the role of certain vitamins in heart disease, not exactly what every mother is doing with their free time. Eventually, Everitt started to think about going back to school, and beyond that, medical school.
“I was thinking about it a lot at that time and what I could do,” she said. “I was already thinking about TCOM and researching the school because the osteopathic philosophy was how I viewed the human body.”
By 2022, with six children at home, the family faced a collective decision: Could they do this as a family?
“If I do this, what does it look like for all of my family was a big question,” she said. “I didn’t want to take it lightly and underperform.”
Underperform, that was something Everitt could not do. In fact, she had to overperform just to have a chance at medical school. Everitt had researched admission standards for medical schools, GPAs, MCAT scores, all of it. She tossed that into a massive spreadsheet, combined with her previous college scores, and calculated what it was going to take to make herself a viable medical school candidate.
“I had to make a 4.0 GPA,” Everitt said.
Everitt had to be a straight A student in every single course, no exceptions. She
decided to enroll at UNT Dallas in 2022 and begin the journey that came with not only the pressure of having to be
perfect in school, but also still being a mother to her family. 
“That pressure was a lot,” she said. “My kids were going from homeschooling into a classroom with teachers for the first time. I tried hard to keep my schooling during their schooling and respect my time with them as much as possible. I didn’t want them to feel like I had traded them for something else; we are going to do this together.”
The family pulled together, even when her husband was not around because of his job as a firefighter-paramedic. Despite her trepidation and the pressure of having to be perfect, Everitt rose to the challenge. She graduated from UNT Dallas in December 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in chemistry.
Fittingly, Everitt, who has poured out so much love for her family, received her acceptance on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.
“I had told my kids that what we would do is cupcakes for them to open with frosting of the institution, a ‘gender reveal’ for my medical school acceptance,” Everitt said.
That day was over five months ago, and she has begun her medical school journey at TCOM, but at times, it does not seem real, she said.
“Every day since then, there have been a lot of times I call my husband and say, ‘I did it’” Everitt said. “It still feels surreal, because for so long I didn’t think it was going to happen.”
Everitt has indeed done it, but things haven’t lightened up as medical school begins for her. Her time management skills she honed as a mother, are going to come in quite handy during medical school.
“We are having regular conversations in my house about calendars, what does Mom’s schedule look like, and it’s one of those things that is going to take commitment and work,” she said.
Technology is also playing a big role in Everitt’s schooling. While nearly all TCOM students will be receiving new Littmann Cardiology IV Stethoscopes, she will be receiving a new Eko CORE 500 Digital Stethoscope that will connect to her hearing aids through Bluetooth technology.
The stethoscope will allow Everitt to hear everything necessary and not miss a beat, but also allow her in the future to do something for someone else that never happened for her.
“I never saw a deaf physician,” she said. “The only time I saw one was when it was portrayed in the media on TV.”
“I’m very open about my disability, in the same way that I have six children, I’m not here to hide that,” Everitt said. “I want to be an inspiration, first for mothers and as a deaf person, to help inspire others to know that they can do this too. When I first started and where I’m at today, it has been really hard, but all of those experiences were so necessary to make me who I am today.”
Today, she is a first-year medical school student. In the not-so-distant future, she dreams of becoming a surgeon.
“I’m a very hands-on person, I like to play instruments, build things, and when I look at the body and see that, that’s what surgery is, you can put people back together,” Everitt said. “I’m not sure how my disability fits into an operating room, but we can figure out what disability aids can make the OR friendlier.”
That’s quite a journey for someone once thought to have “selective hearing.”