Despite struggling with severe cardiomyopathy and a recent heart failure diagnosis, Sienna Stewart was able to walk across the stage to receive her diploma, a moment her family will forever cherish.

On the day of her graduation, Sienna suddenly collapsed, losing consciousness. Paramedics arrived quickly, and once the teen regained consciousness, she tearfully insisted on completing her walk across the stage.

Sienna, who had received a heart transplant ten years ago, had lived with severe cardiomyopathy since the age of four and began “getting sick” earlier this year. Following her transplant, she had lived a relatively normal life for ten years, but it was recently that she had started “getting weak and slowing down.”

Sienna’s mom, Saevon Chum, revealed that her daughter would sometimes experience episodes where she collapsed, and one of those happened on her graduation day.

At the moment Sienna fell, the high school principal could be heard saying, “Just give us a second please, we have a student, just give us a second…”

“When I got there, the ambulance was already there,” Saevon told Fox5Atlanta. “She had collapsed. She had had another episode. But this was the first time she collapsed unconscious.”

Once she had regained her consciousness, Sienna insisted on walking the stage instead of going to the hospital and begged her mom to let her do it. She was the last student to receive her diploma that day, and she received a standing ovation from her peers and those in attendance.

“All she could tell me is, ‘I just want to graduate, I want to walk.’ That’s all she wanted, because she already missed her prom, because before then she was in the hospital and missed her senior prom,” Saevon explained.

Unfortunately, a few weeks after reaching the milestone of graduating high school, Sienna passed away. “As a mom, you feel so proud because she just fought through something that hurts her. You have to be proud. Till the end, I was proud,” Saevon said.