Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

10/06/2010
Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"I thought she was too ambitious. But one of her CAT counsellors, after an interaction with her, told me that the disability was in MY mind." Those are the words of a father, whose 21-year-old daughter got calls from two IIMs this year. Nivya was diagnosed with Cerebellar Haematoma with Angioma in 2002 and was in a coma for three months.

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

Twenty-five in Sanskrit and 24.5 in Hindi out of 25 marks. Mother Geetha Subramanian points out the marks on the eighth standard answer sheets of Nivya. "Nothing is crossed out. She never corrected anything she wrote, because she knew what she was writing," beams Geetha. That was 2001.

Today, Nivya struggles to reach for the pen. She then held it with all five fingers and scribbled her first name below a paragraph that served as a sample of her current handwriting. That paragraph too, had no errors. The font was, however, thrice the normal size. Every letter was a new sketch; she had lost control of one in particular, and the resulting scrawl was a vertical line that cut three lines below it.

On her way to school on May 3, 2002, 13-year-old Nivya vomited, then went into coma for three months. Cerebellar Haematoma with Angioma, the doctors called her condition.

"We had no idea what had happened. The nurses merely told me that she had become like a newborn baby. It took me two months to understand that it meant she would not be able to even brush her teeth by herself," recalls Geetha.

Nivya Subramanian went to do BCom (Hons) from Maitreyi College of Delhi University, then took a year off to prepare for CAT. She scored a creditable 77.57 percentile this year, which earned her calls from two IIMs. She was also admitted to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and the Indian Institute of Forest Management.

She has difficulty talking. "I get tired after writing for about two hours in a three-hour paper. Therefore, I write short answers and try to answer all questions," Nivya reveals her strategy.

Such stories of grit and determination are not rare. Many of the geniuses of our world and the most successful people on the planet have had, and still do, severe physical and mental conditions. But they have all braved it to become THEM. Here are 10 of them. Most had learning disorders, dyslexia and even bad mental and physical conditions. They are proof enough that impossible is nothing.

John Nash
Nobel-winning mathematician
Disability: Schizophrenia

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"Now I must arrive at the time of my change from scientific rationality of thinking into the delusional thinking characteristic of persons... But I will not really attempt to describe this long period of time but rather avoid embarrassment by simply omitting to give the details of truly personal type."

Made famous by the film 'A Beautiful Mind', the story of John Forbes Nash is inspiring. The Noble laureate's work in game theory, differential geometry and partial differential equations are ground breaking. In 1959, Nash started showing signs of paranoia. He believed that there was an organization chasing him. He was admitted to a hospital, and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. After a decade-long treatment, he gradually started recovering by 1970. Much of the recognition came to him after the illness.

Robert Munsch
Author
Disability: OCD, manic-depressive disorder

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"I almost flunked first grade and also the second, third, forth, and fifth; but my younger brother was in the grade behind me and he was a brain and nobody wanted to have me be in the same grade as him, so they kept passing me. I never learned how to spell, graduated from eighth grade counting on my fingers to do simple addition, and in general was not a resounding academic success."

The publisher of 42 books, Munsch was diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive and manic-depressive. He has attended twelve-step recovery meetings for more than 25 years.

Agatha Christie
Writer and author
Disability: Learning disability/dyslexia

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"I, myself, was always recognized... as the 'slow one' in the family. It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was... an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day."

Agatha Christie, the prolific and popular author, had a learning disability. In spite of excellent reading and problem solving skills, she had difficulty with spelling and arithmetic. But it did not prevent her from becoming one of the most popular writers in the English language. She used to dictate her works to an assistant who would type it out.

Stephen Hawking
Theoretical physicist
Disability: Motor Neuron disease

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"All the evidence shows that God was actually quite a gambler, and the universe is a great casino, where dice are thrown, and roulette wheels spin on every occasion."

Stephen William Hawking is a British theoretical physicist whose world-renowned scientific career spans over 40 years. In 2009, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking is severely disabled by motor neuron disease. Symptoms of the disorder first appeared while at Cambridge; he lost his balance and fell down a flight of stairs, hitting his head. The diagnosis of motor neuron disease came when Hawking was 21, and doctors said he would not survive more than two or three years. Hawking gradually lost the use of his arms, legs, and voice, and as of 2009 was almost completely paralyzed.

Ozzy Osbourne
Singer, song writer
Disability: Learning disability/dyslexia

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"Have you ever tried to read that thing [The Bible]? I wouldn't have wanted to be alive in those days, when Adam lived to be, like, 1,000 years old. I can't do it, being dyslexic. By the time I finished page one, I'd be dead."

"The Osbournes", the MTV show, had sub-titles because nobody could make out what Ozzy was saying. "Even I couldn't understand what the [expletive] I was talking about on television," Osbourne once said. Osbourne grew up a severe dyslexic and dropped out of high school. He turned to music. He had trouble with drugs and alcohol.

Albert Einstein
Scientist/Philosopher
Disability: Learning disability

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"He told me that his teachers reported that... he was mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in his foolish dreams."
- Hans Albert Einstein, son

"...never was much good at the 'easy' part of mathematics. To shine, he had to move on to the 'hard' part. In adult life his mathematical intuition was recognised as extraordinary and he could handle deftly the most difficult of tensor calculus, but it appears that arithmetic calculation continued to be an area of comparative weakness"
- Maja, sister

The revolutionary scientist was born in Ulm, Germany. Einstein was dyslexic and could not speak till the age of three. He couldn't even tie his shoelaces till 13. His teachers had nothing good to say about him since he was poor at multiplication, couldn't read well and his spellings were terrible. It is said Einstein's headmaster was heard lamenting to his father that it did not matter what the boy chose, he'd never be successful in anything.

Helen Keller
Author/activist
Disability: Blind and Deaf

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."

That shows the spirit of the first deafblind person to earn a BA degree. Helen Adams Keller was an author, political activist and lecturer. She was well travelled and was outspoken in her opposition to war. She campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes. Helen Keller was not born blind and deaf. She contracted an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", when she was 19-months old. The illness left her deaf and blind.

Thomas Edison
Scientist
Disability: Learning disability/dyslexia

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"My teachers say I'm addled . . . my father thought I was stupid, and I almost decided I must be a dunce."

Thomas Alva Edison was called Alva, or Al by his family. He was a very curious child. He was always asking questions. Even his mother, who had once been a schoolteacher could not answer all his questions. He would experiment to try to find the answers. Once he tried to hatch some eggs by sitting on them. Another time he accidently burned down the family's barn.

The teacher thought there was something wrong with Alva. Though very clear, he was noted to be terrible at mathematics, unable to focus, and had difficulty with words and speech. His mother took him out of the school after just 3 months of schooling. He was then taught at home.

Vincent van Gogh
Painter
Disability: Manic-depressive disorder

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"The sadness will last forever." Those were his last words.

One of the greatest painters of the world ever, van Gogh paintings have immensely contributed to the foundations of modern art. He produced 900 painting and 1100 drawings in just 10 years. Vincent Van Gogh suffered depression. In 1889, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. On July 27, 1890 at the age of 37, van Gogh shot himself. He died two days later.

Charles Schwab
Financier
Disability: Learning disability/Dyslexia

Girl who fought coma for IIM, & 10 other stories of grit

"That's the real problem with kids who struggle with learning ... Some kids feel like they're stupid. I want them to know that they're not. They just learn differently. Once they understand that and have the tools to learn in their individual way, then they can feel good about themselves."

After learning that his son too was dyslexic, Schwab has been providing support and resources to families and their children with learning disabilities through the Charles Schwab Foundation. Each month, the Foundation helps about 1000 families. Even with dyslexia, Schwab earned a BA in economics from Stanford University in 1959 and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1961.

Source: India Syndicate/IANS