NEW DELHI: A year ago, everything felt like a blur of hospital corridors and flashing ambulance lights. Ankita (name changed) remembers lying on a stretcher, not with books in her hands but with IV drips in her arms, as an ambulance ferried her to Class XII practical exams. While her classmates worried about marks, she was thinking about survival, Ankita recalls while speaking to TOI.Her ordeal began in early 2024 in the form of a fever that simply wouldn’t go away. Pathological tests showed little, and she tried to believe it was nothing. Suddenly her condition worsened rapidly, and doctors in local hospitals told her the chances of survival were barely 1%. She spent nearly a month in hospital, including long days in ICU, as her life narrowed down to needles, medicines and the uncertainty of what would come next.By Aug 2024, Apollo Hospital had become her second home. Under the care of Dr Amita Mahajan, senior consultant in paediatric haematology and oncology, she was put on steroids and multidrug chemotherapy.The treatment took a heavy toll. At one stage, complications left Ankita with severe weakness in her legs and loss of bladder control. Doctors adjusted her therapy and added neurological care and physiotherapy, helping her slowly regain strength.Outside the hospital, life offered little support. She lost her mother the previous year, and her father had been absent since childhood. Living with her aunt, Ankita was also battling financial strain. “There were days I went alone from one lab to another for tests, trying to keep up with both treatment and life,” she says.Through it all, she tried to stay in touch with her studies. When the Class XII board exams approached in 2025, it was uncertain if Ankita would be able to appear. But she refused to give up. Her practical exams were written between chemotherapy cycles, each journey from hospital to exam centre made in an ambulance with a doctor and nurse by her side. She would finish her paper and return straight to her hospital bed. Later, after brief periods of recovery, she completed her theory exams from home.When the results were declared — she got 64% — she cried. “It may not sound like much, but for me, it meant everything,” she says while speaking to TOI.“Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is aggressive, but outcomes can be encouraging with timely treatment,” said Mahajan. “What stood out was Ankita’s determination.”Now, a year later, Ankita is stable and on maintenance therapy, returning to the hospital once a month for injections and monitoring. In between, she has begun to rebuild her life, enrolling in a BCA course and moving forward step by step.
