A Utah mother battling a rare terminal cancer planned her funeral after she was diagnosed with three months to live.
In her GoFundMe campaign, Erika Diarte-Carr, 30, revealed that she had struggled with stage 4 small cell lung carcinoma for the past two years, and doctors gave her a terminal diagnosis. After an appointment with an oncologist on September 18, she no longer planned to continue treatments as she was told they would ‘no longer help’. The doctors told her she had a maximum of three months left.
“Three months to spend with my babies and loved ones. Three months to make the most of the time I have left,” she explained. “Over the next few months I have to make sure my kids are okay after I’m gone. I am now faced with the most difficult thing: planning my own funeral.”
Her campaign goal was to raise $5,000 to cover the costs of her future funeral service, but to her shock, more than 30,000 donors have since helped her raise $900,000.
“It happened overnight. I never expected that,” she said ABC News. “I never expected to have a big funeral service, or that many people would help me.”
She added, “With the way things have gone, I’m just in shock… just really grateful for everyone and everything that’s been there.”
As of September 29, the mother of two revealed that she planned to put the majority of these donations into a trust fund for her two children: Jeremiah, 7, and Aaliyah, 5. In the campaign description, she referred to her children as her ‘whole children’. life, light and soul… and what remains [her] to go.”
She also thanked her “amazing medical team” – including Carl Gray and Kylie Money at Ogden Hematology Oncology, Steven Brown of Tanner Clinic and Brandon Fisher – for their continued support.
On May 7, 2022, the single mother walked into the emergency room with a “normal shoulder injury,” only to find out that day she had cancer. Since then, she found the doctor’s words of warning echoing and repeating in her mind as she wondered how she would survive this diagnosis. She wrote that the doctor told her, “I hope you have a good support system at home because you are going to need it, you have a long and hard journey ahead of you.”
“The doctor then told me that there were multiple tumors that had spread to other parts of my body, including my skeleton, and that’s how we were able to find the tumor that was causing my shoulder pain,” Erika continued. “At that moment the damage had already been done. In that moment, mine and my children’s entire lives were changed forever, as well as that of everyone around us.”
Things changed for the mother when she was diagnosed on January 17, 2024, with Cushing’s syndrome, a condition that causes the body to “produce too much of the hormone cortisol over a long period of time,” according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and kidney diseases.
“Then I started to deteriorate and it got worse,” she explained to ABC News, with the syndrome causing rapid weight gain and swelling, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and deterioration of muscles and bones, among other symptoms.
“Since my diagnosis, I have managed to continue working full-time, initially only taking two months off for surgeries, biopsies, appointments, radiation and chemotherapy treatments,” she added on her GoFundMe page. While you are still a full-time mom. I have a GREAT support system, but over time it has taken a major financial, emotional, mental and physical toll on all of us.”
She has chosen the time she wants to spend with her two children and securing their future, the latter of which appears to be secure thanks to the goodwill of thousands of donors.
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