She’ll have to return to hospital soon, for Reena suffers from the uncommon disease called ‘Takayasu Arteritis’, an inflammatory disease that affects the aorta and its branches, cutting off blood supply to critical organs. It’s almost impossible to treat, and Reena’s mother Madhuri (44) knows her daughter’s future is uncertain. Still, the family is keen that she doesn’t miss a year.

“My daughter has had a number of episodes of illness, but she has always bounced back. I don’t know what will happen in the future. But I know for sure she has to give her HSC exams,” says Madhuri.

Reena was only two-and-a-half years old when she began to show the troubling symptoms. “Reena was suffering from congenital hydro-nephrosis blockage, which affected both her kidneys. We rushed her to a nephrologist in Pune who directed us to Mumbai’s Breach Candy hospital,” says Madhuri from Pune. At that tender age, Reena had her first surgery on one kidney, with surgery on the other kidney following a year later

At seven, the problems multiplied. She fared miserably in her Std III exams after a bout of diplopia (double vision). “She could not see properly. Everything, from a pencil to the words in the book, she saw everything double. Initially I thought its the exam blues and ignored it. And it settled on its own,” Madhuri says. But the diplopia bouts continued periodically. She visited her granny in Mumbai once and had an attack of vertigo. Then she lost coordination between the brain and the limbs. “We rushed her to Bombay Hospital. With medication and physiotherapy, she recovered,” recollects the mother.

Despite the diplopia, Reena soldiered on at her studies. “She sometimes got red marks in her report card, but kept working hard,” Madhuri says. Her Std X exams bore fruit of all the hard work—she passed with 69 per cent.

But other things would simply not be as they were for other girls. She joined a gym to reduce weight, but then experienced a numbness on the left side of her body, with a tingling sensation.

For the past two years until this January, Reena attended college as normally as possible, until things took a nasty turn. “Since the age of four she had red patches on her legs and calf that turned black during the winter. Doctors never diagnosed it,” says Madhuri. Now, her hands and legs started to swell. Also, a wound on her right ankle showed no signs of healing.

All this prompted Madhuri to consult yet more doctors and make further rounds of hospitals. Finally, at Hinduja Hospital, Reena was diagnosed as suffering from Takayasu Arteritis, after a PET CT scan. “This disease attacks the aorta and as the disease progresses, patients lose the limb or organ that’s affected since there is no blood carried to that part. Patients can have myriad symptoms—blood pressure, hypertension and inflammation of the valve,” says Dr B A Krishna, consultant and chief of Nuclear Medicine at Hinduja Hospital. “Indian patients usually show the abdominal artery affected, as in this case.”

Reena is struggling to sleep at night since there is poor circulation of blood in the body. “Sleepless nights affected her studies, but our main aim was to treat her. And, still, Reena always had her books around her,” says Madhuri

This girl won’t give up, says her mother, describing the tremendous positiveness and will power the 18-year-old is showing. She even took her oral exams on schedule earlier this month. “God is kind and will take care of her,” says Madhuri.