A single mother to whom doctors had predicted only a few months to live, urging her to raise funds to leave to her two young children whom she will not see grow up, would have succumbed to her cancer on Friday after having raised more than 1 $.6 million.
“It is with a heavy heart that this is the last update I will give for my cousin Erika. She joined her mother Sylvia (…) on the other side. She fought a long and difficult battle. She was strong and held on as long as she could for her babies,” her cousin Angelique Rivera shared on Facebook on Saturday, according to The Independent.
Last month, Erika Diarte-Carr, 30, from Utah, caused a lot of ink to flow when she set up a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign to organize her own funeral and offer financial support to her young children, Jeremiah, 7, and Aaliyah, 5, after she left.
Because since May 2022, the thirty-year-old had been fighting against a rare high-grade terminal cancer, small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC), which had spread to other parts of her body, including her skeleton, at the time. of the diagnosis.
Except that after a first round of treatments with positive results, the woman began to suffer, last January, from Cushing’s syndrome, a rare hormonal disorder that causes significant weight gain, deterioration of muscles and bones, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
Screenshot taken from GoFundMe
Then, in September, his healthcare team told him that the treatments were no longer enough to prolong his life, estimating him to only have three months to live.
“Three months with my babies. (…) Three months to make the most of the time I have left. (…) I have to make sure that my children will be okay after I leave,” she said on GoFundMe.
If the woman initially hoped to raise only US$5,000 to cover funeral costs and “leave something behind for my babies”, the campaign had raised more than US$1.19 million on Tuesday, or more than 1.6 million $CAD.
“It happened overnight. I didn’t expect that, she told ABC News after seeing the amount reach $900,000. I didn’t expect many people to reach out and help me. With the way it happened, I’m just in shock… Just very grateful to everyone.”
She finally passed away on Friday, less than a month after her sad update, surrounded by her loved ones.
