A single mother of two from Ogden, Utah, has been given three months to live after being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
30-year-old Erika Diarte-Carr is now raising money for her own funeral, and said whatever is left over from the donations will go into a trust fund for her children Jeremiah, 7, and Aaliyah, 5.
In May 2022, Diarte-Carr was at the hospital to treat a shoulder injury when she learned that she had stage 4 small-cell lung carcinoma, a rare form of cancer, she wrote on her GoFundMe campaign page. She said doctors told her there were multiple tumors that had metastasized to other parts of her body including her skeletal system, which led to the discovery of the tumor that was causing her shoulder pain.
“I hope you have a good support system at home because you’re going to need it, you have a long and hard journey ahead of you,” doctors told her, she said.
Following her cancer diagnosis, doctors diagnosed Diarte-Carr in early January with Cushing’s Syndrome. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the disorder is caused by the body producing too much of the stress hormone cortisol over a long period of time. Some of the symptoms include weight gain, weak muscles, and high blood pressure.
Diarte-Carr said the disorder caused multiple other issues that led to her experiencing rapid weight gain, muscle and bone deterioration, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, and Moon Face.
The NIH describes Cushing’s Syndrome as rare, and that somewhere between 40 and 70 people out of every million are diagnosed with the condition.
After her diagnosis, Diarte-Carr took two months off work for surgeries, biopsies, appointments, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy treatments, before returning to full-time work and caring for her children.
As her health has continued to deteriorate, she said she is no longer able to work and that her health issues have taken a huge financial, emotional, mental, and physical toll on her.
After an appointment with an oncologist on Sept. 18, Diarte-Carr said she decided to stop her treatments as she found they were no longer working. Her doctors told her she had three months to live.
“I have been given 3 months to live. 3 months to spend with my babies and loved ones. 3 months to make the best of what time I have left,” she wrote on her GoFundMe page. “During these next couple of months I need to make sure my kids will be ok after I am gone. I am faced now with the most difficult thing of planning my own funeral.”
Diarte-Carr said she had been unable to work for months and does not have any money saved up, nor does she have life insurance. The GoFundMe page was launched after Diarte-Carr learned she would need around $5,000 to cover her funeral expenses and because she wanted to leave something behind for her children.
She set an original goal of raising $5,000 but has since vastly exceeded her target, reaching $1.1 million through 36,400 donations as of Oct. 1.
The mother of two said that all the money remaining after the funeral costs will be placed in a trust fund for her kids to ensure they are going to be taken care of as they grow up.
“Me & my family thank you ALL from the bottom of our hearts!” she wrote. “They [my children] are my whole life, light and soul. My children are my fight and what keep me going.”