A chronically ill student took her first steps in 10 years to accept her awards for excellence at her high school graduation.
Melika Ghanaati, now 19, hasn’t been able to walk unaided since 2013 due to four debilitating medical conditions.
She was born with a severe form of scoliosis—a curved spine—as well as congenital myopathy, a disorder that has caused weakness in her muscles, severe club feet, and recurring kidney stones.
Growing up, she either used a walker or a wheelchair and needed various surgeries to correct her curved spine.
But after a year of intensive physiotherapy, Ms. Ghanaati was able to walk up to her teacher unassisted to receive her high school diploma, as well as two awards for excellence.
Ms. Ghanaati, who is currently a student at York University in Canada, said: “This was such a special moment for me—my teachers and closest friends were worried about me, but I proved everyone wrong.
“I wanted to surprise everyone with the walk, but most importantly, I believed I owed it to myself.”
For Ms. Ghanaati, her scoliosis and club feet were the biggest hurdles preventing her from being able to walk. Up until the age of 13, she had several surgeries in an attempt to get the curve and club feet corrected.
After undergoing surgery at the age of 12, her heart briefly stopped beating.
“I even had a code blue,“ she said. “I lost a lot of blood flow and needed to have a blood transfusion.”
After the final surgery in 2016, doctors told her she was “banned” from walking.
“At school, I always had a walker, and after the surgeries, I was banned from walking until I was fully healed,“ she said. “I didn’t get the official A-Okay until June 2020—but I was told my body knows better than me and to take a break if I need to stop.”
It took Ms. Ghanaati three years to find the confidence to visit a physiotherapist. She realized her graduation would be the perfect time to take her first steps.
By July 2022, she was doing physiotherapy, and her last year of high school was very chaotic.
“I was trying to fit learning to walk in with four different extracurricular clubs,” she said. “I’d come home completely exhausted and would need to do my best at the exercise homework I was given.”
Describing her time doing the physio as “like a baby learning to walk,” Ms. Ghanaati’s progress was gradual—she had to take one step at a time.
She was given exercises such as holding on to the wall and putting one foot in front of the other.
“Graduation was the goal,“ she said. ”I had to keep going.”
Wanting to keep it a surprise, she didn’t tell her friends or parents that she was practicing walking for graduation. However, she informed the graduation committee about her plans in case something went wrong.
“I spoke to the graduation team—I said ‘No one knows about my plan, but I want to do it,’“ Ms. Ghanaati said. ”They told me it needed to be something I really, really wanted to do.
“I think in the back of my teachers’ minds, they were worried I was going to fall.”
She was even asked if she needed her walker but was determined to walk by herself without anyone holding her hand.
But on the day of graduation, Ms. Ghanaati began to panic and almost abandoned her plan.
“I kept saying to myself in my head, ‘Don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall.’”
She looked down at her feet because she knew she would get distracted if she looked at the audience.
Ms. Ghanaati was given the Vision of the Future Award for achieving good grades and the School Board Award for academic and extracurricular involvement.
She also didn’t realize she’d received a standing ovation from the audience.
“I didn’t really process it at the time,” she said. “If I had, there-and-then I’d have started crying. I just kind of walked off the stage to the side. My chair was waiting for me, and I just felt like, ‘Ugh. I did it.’
“It was a big success, I saw my dad wiping tears with his jacket sleeve.”
