Utah single mother with terminal cancer is raising money for her own funeral through GoFundMe

A Utah mother who was given just three months to live is raising money for her own funeral after “silently battling a rare, terminal cancer” for two years.

Erika Diarte-Carr, 30, originally set a goal of $5,000 for her GoFundMe campaign to cover the cost of a future service. Since then, however, more than 30,000 donors have helped her raise $900,000 as of Sunday, September 29 – the rest of the donations are intended for her to put into a trust fund for her two children.

Mother to Jeremiah, 7, and Aaliyah, 5, Erika described her children as her “whole life” in describing the fundraiser as she revealed in September that she has been battling small cell lung cancer for two years.

She was first diagnosed with cancer on May 7, 2022, when she went to the emergency room with what she thought was a “normal shoulder injury,” according to local station ABC4 and the single mother's GoFundMe description. Now, she wrote, the doctor's words are “replaying” in her head: “I hope you have a good support system at home because you are going to need it, you have a long and hard road ahead of you.”

“The doctor then told me that there were multiple tumors that had metastasized to other parts of my body, including my skeleton, and so we were able to find the tumor that was causing my shoulder pain,” Erika wrote. “By this point the damage had already been done. In that moment, my life and the lives of my children and everyone around us were changed forever.”

Less than two years later, on January 17, 2024, Erika was diagnosed with Cushing's syndrome, which the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases describes as a condition caused by the body “overlong periods of time producing too much hormone cortisol”. Time span.” According to the institute, only 40 to 70 people out of a million suffer from Cushing's.

“That's when I started to flag and everything got worse,” she told ABC4, adding that this caused “most” of her health problems, including the inability to walk.

As the Utah mom explained on her GoFundMe, the diagnosis caused “so many other underlying issues,” including rapid weight gain and swelling, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, “moon face,” muscle and bone loss, and more.

“Since my diagnosis, I have managed to continue working full-time, initially only taking two months off for surgeries, biopsies, appointments, and radiation and chemotherapy treatments,” she wrote. “All while still being a full-time mom. While I have an AMAZING support system, over time it has taken a huge financial, emotional, mental and physical toll on all of us.”

In an update to her campaign, citing an oncologist appointment on September 18, Erika wrote that she had since “decided to stop the treatments as they were no longer helping.” She revealed that she still had three months to live.

“3 months to spend with my babies and my loved ones. 3 months to make the most of the time I have left,” she wrote. “Over the next few months I need to make sure my kids are okay while I’m away. I now face the most difficult task of planning my own funeral.”

While Erika wrote that she is “ashamed and embarrassed for people to know the truth about her diagnosis,” she said that not asking for help is “no longer an option” for her, which led to her decision to to start their fundraising campaign.

After acknowledging her “great medical team” – including Carl Gray and Kylie Money of Ogden Hematology Oncology, Steven Brown of Tanner Clinic and Brandon Fisher – the mother wrote that any funds in excess of her funeral expenses will be placed in a trust fund for their children are paid in.

“It happened overnight. I never expected this,” Erika told ABC4 about the amount of money raised through the fundraiser, which surpassed $900,000 as of September 29th.

“I never expected that there would be a big memorial service or that many people would come forward and help me,” she added. “The way it went, I'm just shocked… just very grateful for everyone and everything that was there.”