Prom season is a rite of passage for most high schoolers, but East Hartford High School junior Christian Ramos has has to fight for his rite – and for his life.
"Christian wasn't supposed to live past the age of 3," his mother Maritza told NBC Connecticut on Friday, "and he's 18 now."
Indeed, Christian has been besieged from birth by a plethora of health challenges, including scoliosis, cardiology issues, asthma, muscular disease and chronic respiratory failure.
Once able to sit in a wheelchair, now Christian is confined to a bed and dependent on a respirator. But this oldest of five siblings wasn't about to let that keep him off the dance floor.
"I think the love he gets every single day is what sustains him," his home special education teacher Denise Beaulieu explained.
Beaulieu has known Christian since he was in first grade and says he's worked just as hard to learn as any of his peers.
"We do research projects, we do PowerPoint, we do a lot of typing on the computer," she described.
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Some of that typing has recently included authoring a brochure that helped generate donations to make Christian's prom night a complete success: a tuxedo from J.T. Ghamo, flowers courtesy of Buettner Florists, tickets from East Hartford High School principal Matt Ryan, photographs by Lifetouch and even a "limo" ride from EMTs at American Medical Response.
Beaulieu says Christian also typed a formal invitation to his date, East Hartford High School student Shaneece Jack, who also has faced many mobility challenges since a car accident when she was just a toddler.
Although his speech is compromised, Christian and Shaneece both exclaimed "excited!" when asked how they felt about the upcoming evening with their classmates at the club level of Rentschler Field.
And as dinner gave way to dancing, the two fit right in with their peers, not quite able to dance the same way, but all smiles and dressed to the nines.
A night Christian and his family might not have dared dream of is now a dream-come-true, according to his mother.
"I don't even know what words I can say, to say how I feel," she said.
