Senior overcomes cerebral palsy to graduate from Hanford High School

Farhana Azad said her day starts like any other teen.

Her mom gets her out of bed. She rushes to get out the door so she can make it to her classes.

Only in Farhana’s case, her mom lifts her out of bed. She rushes out the door with the help of a motorized wheelchair, and a para-educator helps her with her classwork.

And on June 2, she will join the rest of her Hanford High School senior class at the Toyota Center to receive her diploma.

Farhana was diagnosed with cerebral palsy shortly after she was born in a Bangladeshi hospital. The neurological condition left her unable to move much on her own.

She spent the first 10 years of her life living in a house with her family in Bangladesh, a country roughly the size of Iowa bordering India and Myanmar. Her world revolved around the home, where she was home-schooled. Her only playmates were her relatives.

“My world was a lot smaller when I was in Bangladesh,” she said. “I didn’t think it was physically possible to come this far.”

She had a manual wheelchair, so once her mother lifted her from the bed, she relied on others to move her around.

“I can’t say that I hated that, but I didn’t like it,” she said about the manual wheelchair. “I especially didn’t like the fact that I had to rely on someone to get me from one place to another.”

Then her family made a decision that changed her life. They decided to move to Richland, so they could access more advanced devices to help Farhana and her family, including lifts and a motorized wheelchair.

The change in scenery expanded Farhana’s social circle, she said.

“It was overwhelming for the first few days — they were very curious about what’s wrong with me, but as time went on it got better,” she said.

No one treated her differently because of her wheelchair, she said. She replaced the manual version with the motorized model roughly six years ago.

Farhana always has a positive attitude, said Cathy Kuwamoto, the adviser for the class of 2017. She tackled several Advanced Placement courses.

“She is always smiling and friendly to others,” Kuwamoto said. “I have had the honor and privilege of working with her for four years, and I will miss her very much.”

The teen credits much of her success to parents who made sure she was included, and helped her realize her differences didn’t have to hamper her journey into adulthood.

“There are certain points where I feel like, ‘Yeah, I didn’t get to do this because I’m disabled,’ ” she said. “But there is nothing holding me back. I think there is always another way around.”

She is apprehensive about leaving the safety of her home, she said. Her next stop is the University of Washington.

But she’s excited about the future — her goal is to become a doctor.

“I want to be a general practitioner,” she said. “I like working with children because I can watch them from day one and see the type of person they’ll go up to be.”

This story was originally published May 12, 2017 at 6:35 PM with the headline "Senior overcomes cerebral palsy to graduate from Hanford High School."