Nada Edwards had only one goal in mind when she awoke from a five-month-long coma earlier this year: to walk across the stage at Old Dominion University and get her diploma.
And last week, against the odds, Edwards was able to don her cap and gown, and with the help of a walker, accepted her diploma, graduating with her class from Woodrow Wilson High School, WTKR reported.
Her long road to finishing high school was almost derailed in October 2017. Edwards was in a car crash when another car T-boned the one she was in, leaving her unconscious.
Her prognosis was bleak.
"They told me they didn't think that she would wake up and if she did, she would be a vegetable and as a mom, you don't accept that," Alice Edwards told WTKR.
Five months after the crash, Nada Edwards woke up.
On March 7, 2018, nurses at Children's Hospital of Richmond told Alice Edwards that her daughter had lifted her leg and arm while they bathed her. Then when the mother arrived at her daughter's bedside, nurses asked the girl "Nada, do you see mommy?" And Nada shook her head to say yes, WAVY reported last year.
Along with physical therapy, which she is still going through, she had to work with the teachers at her high school to get back on track to graduate this month.
She earned school credits while she healed at Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters, WAVY reported in May 2018.
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“Teachers would come to the house and work with her,” Alice Edwards told WTKR.
"When she took her first set of SOLs (Standards of Learning) and they were like, 'She passed them and she's going to be able to graduate,' we were just floored," Alice Edwards said.
Nada plans on continuing her education at Norfolk State University and major in social work so she can help others when times are tough, WTKR reported.
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