SAN ANTONIO -- A local woman is not drinking or eating anything to raise awareness about a rare auto-immune disease called scleroderma.
For the last four years, Erika Pompa has been working with local restaurants to forward her campaign called "Starving for a Cure," where she chooses a place with a lot of foot traffic to camp outside for 48 hours.
This year, she went to Deco Pizzeria.
"I know it's not the norm. I know people would not think it's a safe thing to do. But I did it because I wanted to grab people's attention. I wanted people to know how serious it was to me, to our family, to our friends who see her on a daily basis, see what she goes through," Pompa said.
For her campaign, Pompa does not eat or drink anything for two days because her cousin Jovana Desarden has difficulty doing so due to a disease called scleroderma. The disease causes the skin and connective tissues in the body to harden or tighten up. There is no cure.
Desarden has lived with scleroderma since she was 12 years old. For some people with the disease, the organs get damaged and it makes eating or drinking painful. Desarden said that there was a time when she had to be on a feeding tube for eight months.
"The lining of the esophagus starts to get fibrotic tissue, starts to erode. Because of the intestinal
involvement, there's a lot of [acid] reflux that comes back up to the esophagus, which causes the
damage," Desarden explained. "It's something I have to endure every single time I eat, and some days I don't even want to eat."
Pompa is hoping San Antonians will help her raise more awareness by showing up to the Fifth Annual Stepping Out to Cure Scleroderma. It's happening at Woodlawn Lake Park on June 2.
If you would like to sign up, click here.