When Erika Carr found out in September that she likely had less than three months to live, the single mom of two young kids decided to try to raise $5,000 to pay for her own funeral costs, and to perhaps have a little extra left over to take care of Jeremiah, 7, and Aaliyah, 5. As of Monday morning, that GoFundMe had raised nearly $1.2 million for the family—but that development comes with sad news about Carr. The 30-year-old died last week, according to a social media post by a woman who says she's Carr's cousin, per KTVX.
"It is with a heavy heart that this is the final update i will be giving for my cousin Erika," Angelique Rivera wrote early Saturday on Facebook. "She fought a long and hard battle. She was strong and held on as long as she could for her babies." In her GoFundMe, Carr had revealed that in May 2022, on the day before Mother's Day, she found out after going to the hospital for shoulder pain that she actually had late-stage terminal small cell lung carcinoma, a cancer with "multiple tumors that had metastasized" to other parts of her body.
She also revealed that she'd been diagnosed in January of this year with Cushing's syndrome, which led to a whole slew of other problems, including rapid weight gain, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes. Despite various cancer treatments, Carr was told by doctors in September that she had just months to live, so she decided to stop treatments and spend time with her children. That's when, per ABC4, Carr confronted the "seemingly impossible" task of setting up her own funeral. Of the donations that had poured in (now 38,000 and counting), Carr told the outlet in September: "I'm just in shock ... just very grateful for everybody." (More crowdfunding stories.)
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