Teacher’s day gift
I’ve been a teacher for almost ten years now, and as teacher’s day is approaching, I remember a wonderful student – R. R was not my student at all, she was my patient.
She was first admitted with seizures and severe renal failure in the nephrology unit I was working in then. She improved a little with dialysis, and whenever we went to the ward, we found her studying for her class 10 exams. This was with haemoglobin of 5 and a creatinine of 10!
She faced the disease so bravely – the thrice weekly dialysis, the work up for renal transplant, and the transplant itself. I just saw her crying once – her 10th standard exam centre was far away, and they could not get the centre transferred to Cochin, where she was undergoing dialysis. My professor and her parents said forget the 10th standard exams. They are not as important as her health. But (and this is the one of the things in my life I am proud of having done) I said it was very important for her morale to do the exam, and arranged for dialysis in a town close to her exam centre.
R finished her exam, and came to tell me she had got a first class, and was applying for a revaluation because she felt she deserved a distinction.
With kidneys failing, with severe anaemia, with no one insisting on a good academic performance, there was still something in R which drove her to study. And this, I think, is the most precious gift to teachers – the urge that students have to learn. And our biggest responsibility too – to see that with our actions and words, we foster this hunger to learn, let it grow, let it flower further in to a desire to teach, to teach well...
