“She fought a long and hard battle. She was strong and held on as long as she could for her babies,” wrote the cousin of Erika Diarte-Carr, a single mother of two who battled small cell lung carcinoma.
A Utah mom — who raised over $1 million for her funeral and her children amid her battle with terminal cancer — has passed away at the age of 30.
Over the weekend, the family of Erika Diarte-Carr announced that the single mother of two — son Jeremiah, 7, and daughter Aaliyah, 5, — had died following her battle with cancer.
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Diarte-Carr’s cousin Angelique Rivera shared the sad news on Facebook Saturday morning.
“It is with a heavy heart that this is the final update i will be giving for my cousin Erika. She has joined her mother Sylvia, her Brother JJ, her uncles Chava & Loui on the other side,” Rivera wrote alongside a series of photos of Diarte-Carr.
“She fought a long and hard battle,” she added. “She was strong and held on as long as she could for her babies. I know she was so thankful for all of your support and love and prayers.”
One of the photos featured Diarte-Carr lying in a bed while posing with a bouquet of flowers.
“R.I.P My beautiful angel,” Rivera wrote over the photo. “Forever in our hearts & never forgotten. I’ll see you on the other side my boo. Love always your butta kup.”
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According to a GoFundMe fundraiser, which Diarte-Carr appeared to have created last month, the single mother shared that she had been “silently battling” a rare cancer: small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) and a high-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma for two years. According to the National Institute of Health, SCLC is the “most frequent” neuroendocrine lung tumor.
On September 18, Diarte-Carr wrote that she had “decided to discontinue treatments as they will no longer help” and she was given “three months to live.”
“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,” she said. “Due to me not being able to work for months now I do not have any finances saved up or any life insurance set aside for this situation. I have looked into the expenses and I am needing to raise about $5,000 to ensure funeral costs are covered plus I’m wanting to leave something behind for my babies.”
As of this posting, the fundraiser has far surpassed Diarte-Carr’s modest $5,000 goal, raising nearly $1.2 million.
Also in the description of her GoFundMe, Diarte-Carr detailed her health battle, including what led to her diagnosis.
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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 she “walked out diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer.”
“The doctor than proceeded to tell me that there were multiple tumors that had metastasized to other parts of my body including my skeletal, which is how we were able to find the tumor that was causing my shoulder pain,” she added. “By that point the damage had already been done.”
Diarte-Carr said she received another diagnosis in January 2024, sharing that she was diagnosed with Cushing syndrome.
According to Mayo Clinic, Cushing syndrome occurs “when the body has too much of the hormone cortisol for a long time,” and “can result from the body making too much cortisol, or from taking medicines called glucocorticoids, which affect the body the same way as cortisol.”
Diarte-Carr wrote that the disease “caused me so many other underlying issues such as rapid weight gain & swelling (60+ lbs in a matter of weeks), muscle and bone deterioration, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, Moon Face & so much more!”
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Despite her diagnosis, she said that she kept “working full time, taking only 2 months off in the beginning for surgeries, biopsies, appointments, radiation and chemotherapy treatments,” while “still being a full time mama.”
“I do have an AMAZING support system but over time it has put a major financial, emotional, mental and physical toll on us all,” she added.
On October 3, Diarte-Carr shared an update on the GoFundMe, in which she thanked those who donated to the fundraiser. She revealed that due to the “generous” donations, she and her family were “now able to plan 1 big trip as a family that will leave them with memories that’ll 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 an update on October 6, in which she said that Diarte-Carr and her children planned to get baptized on October 13, one day after Diarte-Carr passed away. However, Rivera reposted a video of the baptism that appeared to show that both of Diarte-Carr’s kids were baptized following their mother’s passing.
