Tammy: Why I joined the mission.

I knew the doctor had a project she was putting together that was dear to her heart. She would walk around discussing things here and there throughout the day. While I was reading during lunch one day, Dr. Nguyen and Amy were talking, and Dr. Nguyen mentioned that she needed a treasurer. Amy very happily chimed in with “Tammy's good with numbers!”. Without hesitation, I answered with “What do you need? I'll give you my time to help make it happen.”

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This is what happens when you come from a family that was always giving. It seemed, when I was younger, as if my mother fed the world, she was always welcoming people in for a meal. My father and brother were volunteer firefighters, and as the years went on, my nephews joined. Now my husband and youngest daughter belong to two volunteer fire companies, and my son is impatiently waiting to be old enough to join, also (and truth be told, I have also volunteered to join the Women's Auxiliary at the fire dept.). I arrived home from our first Gathering Beans meeting and informed my husband and children that I had volunteered them to help out. The response was “Of course you did,” and to inform their friends that they were going to volunteer with us.

One of my biggest motivations for helping with Gathering Beans is the teaching/training aspect. I have been thinking for a while that I wanted to start a program to train others on how to assist the visually impaired. It became evident to me in the twenty-plus years since I met my father-in-law, Lou, that unless you were related to someone with low or no vision, nobody really knew how to help guide them. There is trial and error in learning to guide someone visually impaired. The first time I took Lou somewhere, I proceeded to walk him into a wall, which he found extremely funny, and I was mortified.  The part that weighed on me the most was that when he went to a doctor's appointment, he didn't have the luxury of privacy to speak with his doctor. There wasn't anyone in the doctor's office who could guide him to the room, onto the exam table, to the blood draw station, etc. Whoever brought him to the office was expected to stay with him the entire time, giving him no chance to speak with the doctor by himself. In all those years of taking Lou to his appointments, I only encountered one doctor who asked if he could guide him to the room, and my first thought was that he must have a family member with vision issues. I want to help healthcare workers learn to assist their patients who are visually impaired to navigate their facilities and allow them a sense of independence.