Reflections of a Future TVI
Rachel Bigham
C.O.M.S., TVI. M.Ed. student
The Ohio State University
bigham.37@bukeyemail.osu.edu
When someone asks me why I got into the
field of visual impairments, I find myself often
changing my reasoning. As each day passes, I
find myself gaining more and more reasons that
this is the career that I was meant to take part.
My first look into the need for professionals
in the visual impairments field occurred about four
years ago while I was working for the Fairfield
County Help Me Grow program. I was assigned
as a service coordinator for a family. At that time,
I had no idea just how much impact they would
have on my life. I met this family, a mother and
son, at a very difficult time in their lives. Although
service coordination is typically done for the child,
this family required some different intervention.
The mother, at that time in her mid to late twenties, had been slowly losing her vision since she
was a pre-teen. She had congenital cataracts
and sadly, no one told her what could potentially
happen when she got older. She would tell me at
each monthly visit how much less she could see
than the previous time that we had met. She
shared with me her fears about living as a single
parent and her possible inabilities to care for her
child. She shared with me the struggles that she
met each day just trying to get dressed or cook a
meal. She never once showed any lack of
strength when her son was around.
This strong woman's distress put me into
action. I began researching everything that I
could to find out what services were available to
her. I could not believe that no one had ever
taken the time to give her resources to gain skills
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