“She fought a prolonged and arduous battle. She was strong and held on for as long as she could with her children,” wrote the cousin of Erika Diarte-Carr, a single mother of two who was battling small cell lung carcinoma.
A Utah mother — who raised more than $1 million for her and her children’s funeral amid her battle with terminal cancer — has died at age 30.
Over the weekend, Erika Diarte-Carr’s family announced that the only mother of two children — son Jeremiah, 7, and daughter Aaliyah, 5 — died following her battle with cancer.
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Diarte-Carr’s cousin, Angelique Rivera, shared the unfortunate information about Facebook Saturday morning.
“It is with a heavy heart that this is the definitive update I will be giving my cousin Erika. She joined her mother Sylvia, her brother JJ, her uncles Chava and Loui on the other side,” Rivera wrote alongside a series of photos of Diarte-Carr.
“She fought a prolonged and arduous battle,” he added. “She was sturdy and held on as long as she could for her babies. I know she was so grateful for all your support, love and prayers.”
One of the photos showed Diarte-Carr lying on a bed while posing with a bouquet of flowers.
“RIP my stunning angel,” Rivera wrote of the photograph. “Infinitely in our hearts and by no means forgotten. See you on the other side, my love. Love all the time, you butta kup.
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According to a GoFundMe fundraiser that Diarte-Carr appeared to have created last month, the single mom shared that she was “silently fighting” a rare cancer: small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) and a high-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma 2 years ago. In response to National Welfare InstituteSCLC is the “most common” neuroendocrine lung tumor.
On September 18, Diarte-Carr wrote that she had “decided to stop treatments as they would no longer help” and she was given a “three month stay.”
“Over the next few months, I would like to make sure that my children will be okay after I am gone. I am now faced with the most difficult thing of planning my own funeral,” she said. “Since I haven’t been able to work for months, I don’t have any money saved or any life insurance coverage set aside for this example. I looked at the bills and I need to raise about $5,000 to make sure the funeral costs are covered and I’m looking to leave something behind for my children.
As of this posting, fundraising has far surpassed Diarte-Carr’s modest $5,000 goal, raising nearly $1.2 million.
Furthermore, in her description GoFundMeDiarte-Carr detailed her health battle, including what led to her prognosis.
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She said she went to the emergency room in May 2022 for what she believed to be a “normal shoulder injury” but “was identified with stage 4 terminal cancer.”
“The doctor then told me that there were several tumors that had metastasized to other parts of my body, including my skeleton, and that’s how we were able to find the tumor that was causing pain in my shoulder,” she added. “By then, the damage had already been done.”
Diarte-Carr said she received another diagnosis in January 2024, saying she was diagnosed with Cushing’s syndrome.
In response to Mayo Clinic, Cushing’s syndrome occurs “when the body has too much of the hormone cortisol for too long” and “may result from the body producing too much cortisol or taking medications known as glucocorticoids, which affect the body in the same way as cortisol. .
Diarte-Carr wrote that the disease “has caused me so many other underlying problems, such as rapid weight gain and bloating (over 60 pounds in a matter of weeks), muscle and bone deterioration, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, moon face and so much more . !”
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Despite her prognosis, she said she continued “working full time, initially only taking two months off for surgical procedures, biopsies, appointments, radiotherapy and chemotherapy”, while “still being a full-time mother”.
“I have an AMAZING care system, but over time it has taken a significant financial, emotional, psychological and physical toll on all of us,” she added.
On October 3, Diarte-Carr shared an update on GoFundMe, in which she thanked those who donated to the fundraiser. She revealed that thanks to the “recipient” donations, she and her family “have now been able to plan a big trip as a family that will leave them with memories that will last a lifetime.”
The update came just two days after Rivera shared in a Facebook post that the family was able to “finalize” Diarte-Carr’s funeral services.
She went on to give a replacement on October 6, through which he stated that Diarte-Carr and her children planned to be baptized on October 13, shortly after Diarte-Carr’s death. Even so, Rivera I reposted a video of baptism that seemed to indicate that all of Diarte-Carr’s children were baptized after their mother’s death.