Exam first, then health for a brave girl in TN

Chennai, Mar 6: Displaying grit and determination, a tenth standard girl student, who met with an accident yesterday while proceeding to take up CBSE exams, preferred to take the exam, ignoring doctors' suggestion for an immediate surgery to treat her bleeding knee.

J Shalini, a student of Asan Memorial School in the city, was proceeding to school along with her father B Jeevaraj in a two-wheeler when they met with an accident. She sustained injuries to her right knee and could not even walk. She had to pick up the hall ticket and proceed to a school in Kilpauk, a five km distance, to attend her exams scheduled in the afternoon. Notwithstanding the trauma of meeting with an accident and a bleeding knee, she insisted on attending exams on time. She even refused to go to a hospital along with her father, who was rushed for medical aid in an autorickshaw.

Locals helped her reach her school, but the school authorities took her to nearby Apollo hospitals, where she was given first aid. After getting special permission from the CBSE, the school authorities allowed her to take the exam in her school itself instead of the allotted centre, with the help of a scribe.

Shalini was brought to the school in an ambulance along with a six-member team of paramedics, who monitored her condition right through the three-hour exam period.

The moment question paper was given to her, she started dictating the answers to her scribe, unmindful of the painful knee, lying in a bed with a bandaged leg in the school's conference hall.

Soon after the examination was over, she was rushed to the hospital where doctors performed a surgery.

Shalini, despite writhing in pain, is confident of taking her next exam on Tuesday.

UNI