Kolkata: A 20-year-old woman from Kolkata, who has the intellect of a nine-year-old girl and suffers from an 80% loss in peripheral vision, battled multiple life-threatening ailments since childhood, including blood cancer and a 32-day coma. She overcame insurmountable odds to finish second in the just-concluded 24th National Para-Swimming Competition in Goa.
Tarunika Ghosh was only 18 months old when doctors in Kolkata diagnosed her with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. But when her condition deteriorated, doctors suspected she had cancer, and her parents, Sanjeev and Subarna, took her to Tata Memorial Hospital. There, doctors diagnosed her with third-stage blood cancer and said she had a 50% survival chance. That was in 2005.
When she was administered the final chemo in 2008, an infection is suspected to have entered through the lumbar needle, leaving her in a coma for 32 days. Though she miraculously came out of the coma, days after she celebrated her fifth birthday, she experienced vision loss and was diagnosed with meningitis. A CT scan revealed that cerebrospinal fluid was trapped at five places in her brain. Doctors in Chennai told the parents that Tarunika would survive between two to five days and strongly advised immediate surgery, although they admitted there was only a 50% chance of her survival even then.
However, two other doctors — one from Vellore and another from Mumbai — asked the family not to put her under the scalpel as that would turn her into a vegetative state forever if she survived the operation. The family decided to trust the latter advice and are glad they did so.
After returning to Kolkata, they began hydrotherapy and encouraged her to first walk in the swimming pool and later take to swimming.
“Since I was the GM of clubs with swimming pools, it helped. She now trains three hours each day in the morning and afternoon with her mother,” said Sanjeev.
Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant was so moved by Tarunika’s story of survival that he facilitated her at a special function on Tuesday. Bengal Paralympic Association president Chandan Roychowdhury said that while Bengal performed extremely creditably at the competition, winning 27 gold, 22 silver and 3 bronze medals, the silver that Tarunika won was special.