When she was 23 weeks pregnant, Cara Walters Combs, 38, was diagnosed with stage IV melanoma. While doctors advised her to seek treatment immediately, she chose to delay until after her baby was born. The St. Louis, Missouri woman went into labor three weeks later and died December 8, according to Fox2.
According to Combs’ Facebook page, she delayed treatment to get her baby to 28 weeks.
“There’s no good decision here,” she wrote. “We will both be fighting for our live and I feel incredibly guilty about that.”
Combs, who also has three older children, estimated the baby would be born the first week of December and she planned to start treatment 48 hours later.
The baby, Shaylin, weighed 2 pounds, 1.2 ounces at birth.
“She sacrificed everything so her legacy could live on,” Ray Combs wrote of his wife on the family’s GoFundMe page.
So far, the family has raised over $50,000 of their $100,000 goal.
(Emily Lucarz Photography)
