Pune: PG student suffers fractures, yet appears for exam barely four hours after accident

PUNE: Overcoming excruciating pain, Nikita (23) travelled in an ambulance for about 50km to appear for her final-year MSc exam in Pune, barely four hours after suffering fractures in her right thighbone in an accident on July 11.
Not letting the accident deter her spirit, she was back to write the second paper on July 14, a day after undergoing a major surgery.
Nikita, a resident of Atit village in Satara district, was waiting for a Pune-bound bus on the Satara-Pune Highway near Shirval, about 20km from her village, when the driver of a private bus lost control over the vehicle around 11.30am on July 11.
“Before I could even sense the danger, the speeding bus had killed one person standing near me. The front corner of the bus hit me from the rear,” Nikita, who admitted herself in a Bibvewadi hospital seven hours after the accident, told TOI.
Senior orthopaedic surgeon Dr Nitin Bhagali said, “Femur (thighbone) fracture is always the most painful. In Nikita’s case, the accident had split her femur bone into four pieces. As it was a closed (comminuted) fracture, there was no wound or blood on the outside. But internally, she had suffered a heavy blood loss.”
Immediately after the accident, locals called up Nikita’s brother and took her to a hospital in Shirval. Against the advice of the doctors, Nikita persuaded her family members and headed to Pune’s Abida Inamdar College’s Azam Campus, around 60km from Shirval, in an ambulance around 1.30pm and reached the centre around 3pm.
Despite the intense pain, Nikita wrote the paper for almost two hours. She underwent a major surgery on the morning of July 13 and wrote her second paper at 2pm the next day. She is on road to recovery and will write her third and final exam on July 18.