4 min readPuneJul 29, 2022 10:51 AM IST
First published on: Jul 22, 2022 at 08:06 PM IST
Two months before Term 1 CBSE examinations in November last year, 17-year-old Ojas Dhankar was rushed to the hospital for what his parents thought was jaundice. It turned out to be leukeamia. Six months since, he has scored 81 per cent in the class 12 results declared on Friday.
Dhankar, who is a chess and rubik’s cube enthusiast, had to let go of his long-held IIT-JEE dream this year because he has “two more years of chemotherapy,” which he “cannot do alone in another city or away from home”.
He has now taken admission in an integrated BTech programme at the Symbiosis Skills University with mechatronics as his special subject.
“It is not something you plan for. It is a situation you’re thrown into and I did whatever I could. My teachers helped me a lot. Sometimes they extended the deadline of submissions for me, sent me question papers for mock exams, and gave me their personal notes,” Dhankar told The Indian Express.
Speaking of the support he got from his mother Anjali through the period, Dhankar said: “My friends would get on video calls with me. But most of all my family, and my mother, helped. I had extreme mood swings at times…I do not know how she dealt with it. I did not want to write the term one exams…the chemotherapy had just started and it was heavy. I wanted to take a break, but she asked me to just write the exams and that it did not matter how much I scored.”
Anjali, who is a businesswoman, recalled the time – on Ganesh Chaturthi last year – when Dhankar was diagnosed: “He had severe fatigue and was not able to walk much or was hungry either. He was detected with jaundice and we took him to the hospital where they ran some tests but results were not encouraging, so they ran some more. They told us he had leukaemia and that he needs to be admitted immediately for two weeks, adding: “We jumped right into it — a week of pre-chemo followed by chemotherapy. They told us he can study in the hospital. However, after a few days, it was not possible for him to even sit. We went through a lot of transitions during the next few months, but the doctor gave us confidence and we hung onto that hope.”
The days leading up to the first term exams were difficult, Anjali said, with Ojas’s blood sugar levels shooting up or crashing too quickly, making it impossible for him to concentrate. He would also experience nausea, disorientation and would require additional medication to deal with the side effects of chemotherapy medications.
Talking about instilling strength in Dhankar, Anjali said that he was not “a student who studied for hours. His grasping power was good and I was confident in his ability to learn in a little bit of time…I needed to give him a purpose, something else to focus on besides his illness. So, I told him to let the doctors do their job, while he appeared for exams”.
Anjali spoke of the hurdles while writing the exams, when he had to take chemotherapy medication before going to the exam centre. “He sat alone in the library to avoid risk of infection since his immunity was low. I requested the principal to allow me to be in the campus, in case anything happened during those hours”.
She described how Dhankar could not sit for long hours and the difficulties during practical exams, where the authorities “took his synopsis on priority basis”. The “heavy” medications resulted in “cramps,” she noted.
“He got a separate room but no other concessions as we didn’t apply for any. During the second-term exams, his readings (medical) had become better but he still suffered during the subjective papers,” Anjali added.
Dhankar, who is a chess and rubik's cube enthusiast, had to let go of his long-held IIT-JEE dream this year (Photo source: Pexels) 
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