Residents of the Four Corners community came together to raise money for a local woman diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
Farmington resident Crista Crowder suffers from a rare form of sarcoma, according to KOB 4. Due to the lack of health care providers in her rural area, she is often forced to drive long distances to areas that have more medical resources.
Crowder is having difficulty finding in-state providers who can adequately treat her rare form of cancer. She traveled to Colorado to receive help, to no avail. She now hopes to travel to Texas to seek treatment options, KOB 4 reported.
"They don't know what to do next, so we are trying to get to Texas – Houston, Texas – to get a second opinion, third opinion," Crowder told KOB 4.
While out-of-state providers can provide better options, they are not covered under Crowder's insurance. This has forced her family to pay for expenses themselves.
"We're self-pay for the first appointment; they said it costs about $25,000," Crowder told KOB 4. "They specialize in these things and they do research and everything, so we are hoping they have more knowledge of it, I guess."
In order to help Crowder pay for the bills, a local auction house, Cow House Live Stock Auction, auctioned off a heifer. They raised $10,087 for Crowder's bills.
"I am just humbled by how the community gets behind the people here and get in their pockets and donate," Shane Hatch, auctioneer and manager of the Cow House, told KOB 4. "There is not ever a day in your life where you get to make a difference in somebody else's life and help them along, and today is going to be one of those days."
Crowder's friends and family set up a web page where people can donate to a Help Hope Live campaign on her behalf.
