The subject of a dance-based video that has gone viral isn’t a set of trendy choreography but a teen’s celebration of his heart transplant hospital release.
Amari Hall, a 15-year-old Capitol Heights, Md., resident was captured grooving in his hospital bed post-surgery in March by his aunt Charawn Hunter. As Hunter cheers him on, doctors and nurses also join in. Although the video, which has been viewed more than six million times since it was shared in May, depicts joy, the road to get there was not easy.
Amari was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a congenital heart defect that CNN reported led him to have three corrective surgeries before he turned 3.
But after 13 years, his heart began to fail.
“It was very hard in the beginning, but Amari never gave up hope,” his mother, Juaquinna Hunter, tells ABC News.
In December, Amari was hospitalized at University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore and waited until March to have his surgery; six days after the procedure, his family played music and he began to move.
“When I picked up my camera, I wanted to show the world what a huge heart warrior he was,” Hunter says.
She told CNN she posted the clip to stress the importance of organ donation, especially in the Black community.
As for Amari, who ABC News reported will continue to receive regular biopsies and take medication to prevent his body from rejecting his new heart, he just wants to keep dancing.
“I want to be dancing with the ladies,” he says.
