Maharashtra HSC 12th result 2019: Nagpur teen scores 96% 2 years after road accident left her with crippling memory loss

On November 18, 2017, the teenager’s scooter was knocked down by a car on a Nagpur street. After she was rushed to the city’s Neuron Hospital, doctors said she had passed into a comatose stage and needed urgent “de-compressive craniotomy to relieve an extra pressure created by accumulation of blood in the left side of the brain”.

While the operation was successful, Pakhi lost her memory, said her parents Arun and Prachi. The accident also had rendered the left side of her body considerably weak, so much so that she was unable to perform any physical activity. After around 45 days, she returned home and was later moved to Mumbai’s Kokilaben Ambani Hospital for robotic therapy.

During this period, Pakhi showed signs of partial memory recovery and was advised to return home for a faster recovery. In June 2018, she underwent another surgery at Bombay Hospital to affix a part of her skull that was removed to relieve the extra pressure on her left brain during the first surgery.

The accident and the surgeries had not only dashed Pakhi’s hopes of becoming a research scientist but also put her academic future into uncertainty.

“By this time Pakhi had started recovering her memories, but her present memory was still weak. So, we wondered if she could pursue her HSC in science stream, as she had wanted to. Initially, we did try, but without much success. Then we decided to let her pursue arts,” her father said.

The girl took admission to the city’s Hislop College, where her parents would often accompany her and sit through classes with her. “Often, I would take down notes for her,” said Prachi, who is an architect.

Congratulating Pakhi for her result, Shital Peter, her English teacher said: “It’s simply amazing that she has notched the top position in arts from Vidarbha.”

To help Pakhi, the school authorities had earlier shifted her class from the third floor to the first. “We did whatever we could do to help her. But she wasn’t one to angle for sympathy. It was really a privilege to be her teacher, rather it was the other way round,” Peter added. After Pakhi recovered her memory, she developed a speech impairment in form of a slur.

Dr Chandrashekhar Pakhmode, her first surgeon, said, “I have seen few patients recovering physically so well from the condition she was brought to us in. She had almost become spastic. But I have seen none doing intellectually so stupendously well. I will give full marks to her and her parents for that.”

Pakhi, who now wants to pursue graduation from National Law University at Bangalore or Hyderabad, took the entrance test for the course last Sunday. “It was full of ups and downs. It took too much effort to do even simple things. But my parents encouraged me all the time,” she said.