It takes immense courage to live with odds stacked against you. Dr Anupma Gupta, who lost her legs in a vehicle pile-up near Bandala village on the Amritsar-Tarn Taran highway on December 10, is the perfect example of bravery and strength.
“In whatever condition the Almighty puts you, accept it and move on. It’s your inner strength that guides you at every step. Life goals remain the same. The only difference being that earlier, I could leap fast in my journey of life. But now, I would have to walk slowly to achieve my goals,” she says with firmness in her voice.
As a New Year’s resolution, Dr Anupma intends to complete her PhD in dermatoglyphics and take classes through web. “I can do it being on a wheelchair. Later, when I will be self-sufficient, I will rejoin duty. Whatever happened had to happen. There’s no point fretting over it.”
She is under treatment at Amandeep Hospital here.
Dr Avtar Singh, under whose supervision she is being treated, says: “When she was brought to the hospital, she was almost dead. Her pulse and BP could not be recorded. She was bleeding profusely from the lower part of her legs. There were only 10 per cent survival chances if we amputated her legs. A team of 20 doctors performed surgeries and 10 to 20 bottles of blood were infused to save her life. She came to senses after four days. With her strong will power, six months down the line, she can live an almost normal life with a good pair of artificial limbs.”
Present on Dr Anupma’s bedside was her daughter Arushi Gupta, who incidentally got the coveted tag of a “doctor” on Tuesday, as she received the news of her clearing the MBBS course on her mobile phone.
Arushi says, “What my mother has done is something that not many of us can even think of. When doctors told us that her legs would have to be amputated to save her life, we readily accepted it as we wanted her to be with us. The way my mother has bravely accepted her condition makes her an inspiration for everyone.”
Around 7.30 am on December 10, Dr Anupma, head of the anatomy department at Dashmesh Dental College, Faridkot, and her colleague were on their way to the college when she spotted a head-on crash of vehicles.
Putting her social responsibility as a doctor above all, she immediately asked her colleague to stop the car and rushed to rescue the injured persons. As she was trying to open a mangled door of one of the cars involved in the pile-up, a bus coming from the rear hit her, leaving her unconscious.
“I am relieved to learn that the person whom I tried to pull out of the car has been saved,” Dr Anupma says.
Her only resentment is with people gathered at the accident spot as they were busy making videos of the pile-up rather than helping her in taking injured persons to hospital.
