RICHMOND, Va. -- A fall down the stairs at home on Christmas Eve left Patricia "P.T." Tomlinson battered, bruised, and broken.
"I couldn’t even move literally. I was on my stomach," Tomlinson, who suffered a broken hip and leg, said. "I was just thinking about my job. I was thinking about bills. Everything was going through my head."
She was also worried about losing her home. It's a worry that remains months later.
"I don’t want to give up my home," she said. "I’m familiar with my home. I know where everything is."
Tomlinson was born blind and lives an independent life at home. But that could change.
Since the fall, Tomlinson has not been able to go back upstairs to her bedroom.
She instead sleeps on an air mattress downstairs.
She needs a chairlift, for safety and mobility reasons, to stay in her familiar home.
"There is no way I’d be able to continue to live here if I didn’t get it," she said.
Friends set up a GoFundMe to help raise the thousands of dollars it would take to buy and install a lift.
Tomlinson said she does not consider giving up her home an option.
"The chairlift is going to help me continue to stay in my home," she said. "It might take me longer to get done but it’ll get to the finish line one way or the other."
She has asked the community for help to reach that goal.
"I believe no matter what you do in life, everyone has challenges, whether you have vision or you don’t," she said. “To me, it’s how you deal with those challenges. That is the key to the puzzle."
If P.T. Tomlinson looks familiar, Greg McQuade previously featured her and the impact she's made on the community through her work with Soar 365.
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