A Kentucky mom who gave birth to quadruplets while battling cancer has been overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers that donated over $1 million to her family. 
 
 “It renews my faith in humanity,” Kayla Gaytan, a mom of six from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, tells PEOPLE. “To know that people that don’t even know us just wanted to help our family is amazing.” 
 
 Gaytan was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma just days after marrying military police officer Sgt. Charles Gaytan in 2016. 
 
 After five months of chemotherapy, doctors told the then mother of two that she wouldn’t be able to have any more children. 
 
 But one month after celebrating the news that her cancer had gone in to remission in May, Gaytan found out she was pregnant – with quadruplets. 
 
 Courtesy Kayla Gaytan 
 
 “I called my husband to tell him and he couldn’t believe it,” Gaytan told PEOPLE. “He thought he had misheard me.” 
 
 Then in December, Gaytan received the devastating news that her cancer had returned. 
 
 “With four babies on the way, I just couldn’t wrap my head around how it could come back,” she says. “I thought I had beat it the first time.” 
 
 The quadruplets were delivered via C-section at 30 weeks on Dec. 30 so that Gaytan could begin the treatments doctors hope will save her life. 
 
 Courtesy Kayla Gaytan 
 
 “They say I have a 50 percent chance of being here within the next five years,” she says. “But I don’t have a choice but to fight. I have an amazing husband and family that need me.” 
 
 A GoFundMe page the family established to help with medical expenses has raised over $1 million (well over their goal of $5,000) since the family appeared on Fox News last week. 
 
 “Five to six minutes after we went on, the page just took off,” Gaytan says. “We’re just in shock because we never expected this.” 
 
 Courtesy Kayla Gaytan 
 
 Gaytan says she and her husband will use the funds to pay for medical expenses and care for the quadruplets. 
 
 “We’re not sure what costs we’ll incur once they come home, but this will definitely help,” she says. “It’s a great little nest egg.” 
 
 She adds: “From the bottom of our hearts our family has truly been humbled and amazed by the kindness of people.” ||||| Jenna Hinman is fighting for her life in a medically-induced coma after she gave birth to healthy twins at 30 weeks pregnancy, only to discover she had a rare cancer of the placenta that has filled her lungs with tumors. 
 
 The 26-year-old mother is in “critical but stable” condition at Crouse Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y. The twin baby girls, Kinleigh and Azlynn are doing fine at 2 pounds, 9 ounces, and 3 pounds, 6 ounces, respectively. 
 
 "We're hanging in there," her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. Brandon Hinman, told ABCNews.com. "We are just taking it day to day, but we are starting to get some positive results and are pretty happy about that. The chemo is starting to have an effect." 
 
 Prayers for Jenna/Facebook PHOTO: Kinleigh and Azlynn Hinman are seen in this undated photo posted to Facebook. 
 
 "The twins are doing well and don't have breathing tubes anymore," said Hinman, 30, who is stationed at Fort Drum. "Both are feeding and right where they need to be at 30 weeks." 
 
 Crouse Hospital spokesman Bob Allen said her treatment was "a highly rare situation here, not just because of the pregnancy-related cancer, which is a big piece of it, but the fact that she is on ECMO technology.” 
 
 ECMO or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation is a therapy that uses a pump to circulate blood through an artificial lung back into the bloodstream. The most common conditions that may require ECMO are: heart malformations, severe air leak problems and severe pulmonary hypertension, according to the National Institutes of Health. 
 
 Prayers for Jenna/Facebook PHOTO: Jenna Hinman, seen in this undated photo posted to her Facebook community page, Prayers for Jenna, lost the fight against a rare form of cancer. 
 
 Jenna Hinman, a recreational therapist, began to go into labor on March 3 and was rushed to the emergency room at Good Samaritan Hospital in Watertown, N.Y., where the twins were delivered by emergency C-section. The same day, the twins were transported to Crouse Hospital in Syracuse where its Walter R.G. Baker Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is the only one in the in central New York designated as a regional perinatal center. 
 
 The new mother had only a quick visit with the babies before they were taken to the Crouse NICU. When Jenna Hinman began coughing up blood, she, too was transferred to Crouse. 
 
 “She was really in distress with breathing difficulties,” Crouse Hospital spokesman Cheryl Abrams told ABCNews.com. “It was a situation where the babies were in distress, too.” 
 
 At first doctors suspected pneumonia, but three days later, they diagnosed stage 3 choriocarcinoma. 
 
 Choriocarcinoma is a malignant form of gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD), tumors that involve abnormal growth of cells inside a woman’s uterus. This particular type affects only about 2 to 7 of every 100,000 pregnancies in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. 
 
 Choriocarcinoma is much more likely than other types of GTD to grow quickly and spread to organs away from the uterus. About one-quarter of women who develop this disease miscarry. 
 
 Chief of Medicine for Crouse Hospital Dr. David Landsberg said stage 3 cancer had invaded Hinman's lungs but had not gone to the brain. The cancer itself is "curable tumor," he said. 
 
 "Placental tissue grows at a very rapid rate to support the fetus, which explains why the cancer is so aggressively metastatic," he said. "It grows into the uterus and once it gets out, it's looking for somewhere else to grow." 
 
 Without ECMO, her condition would be "100 percent fatal," said Landsberg. "The chemo will be the real cure. The ECMO is keeping her alive for the chemo to do its job." 
 
 He said a cure was "on the edge of what is possible." ||||| Stephanie Culley and Beth Laitkep had been friends since high school. When Laitkep's cancer spread to her brain and spine at the age of 39, she had a big question to ask her best friend. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post) 
 
 It was a heart-wrenching moment for two best friends — one lying in a hospital bed, the other sitting by her side. One dying from breast cancer, the other promising to care for the young lives she was leaving behind. 
 
 At a hospital in Virginia, the two women started to cry. 
 
 “‘Will you take my babies? Will you do this for me?'” 39-year-old Stephanie Culley, from Alton, Va., said her friend, Beth Laitkep, asked her. “I told her yes, I would do it in a heartbeat.” 
 
 [Why a Georgia state trooper waited to tell four children they were orphans] 
 
 Laitkep, a single mother to six children, found out she had breast cancer in 2014, when she was pregnant with her last — a boy named Ace — Culley told The Washington Post on Saturday in a phone interview. Ace was delivered by emergency C-section at 30 weeks, she said, so that Laitkep could begin aggressive chemotherapy treatments. 
 
 By the next year, the treatments appeared to be working, Culley said, and Laitkep and her children moved from Texas to South Boston, Va. 
 
 In June 2015, a month after the move, Laitkep’s cancer came back; it was a time, Culley said, when the two women, who had been friends since high school, started to reconnect. Culley said she started helping Laitkep with the house, taking her to doctor appointments and, then, sitting by her bedside when the medicine was no longer helping. 
 
 “I felt this pull to reconnect with her,” Culley said, “this pull that I could not stop.” 
 
 Beth, mother of 6, lost her courageous fight with breast cancer at just 39 years old. pic.twitter.com/Sqr13lJdnU — Caren Pinto (@CarenRPinto) June 1, 2016 
 
 The cancer hit Laitkep’s bones. Although more chemotherapy treatments seemed to beat down the disease again, Culley said, Laitkep soon started to have pain in her back and in her legs. The cancer, she said, had spread to Laitkep’s brain and spine. 
 
 “The doctor told me that there was nothing that could be done,” Culley said. “That’s when we started talking about the kids.” 
 
 Culley said that the father to the older children wasn’t in the “picture” and that the father to the younger children left as Laitkep was battling cancer. She said she could not speak further while the Culleys are in custody proceedings. 
 
 Laitkep wanted her children to be cared for in the same way she would have cared for them. She wanted them to be kept together — not split up. 
 
 Culley laughed as she told The Post about her best friend’s “silliest” request — she wanted them dressed with matching bows in their hair. 
 
 “At that point, we took the kids down to the hospital for her to talk to them about it,” Culley said. “We said, ‘If you do not get a miracle for mommy, who do you want?’ They all pointed to me. That melted my heart.” 
 
 Culley added: “We all decided that was what we needed to do — take all of them and keep them all together as our family.” 
 
 [A firefighter’s touching gesture to comfort a child hurt in a grim car crash] 
 
 On May 19, Laitkep died at 39, and Culley and her husband, Donnie, kept their word — taking the children as their own. 
 
 “She fought as long as she possibly could,” Culley wrote on the family’s GoFundMe page, which as of Saturday afternoon had raised more than $3,900. “She was tired.” 
 
 “I want to thank every one of you that has shown your love and supported Beth and her family during this time,” Culley added. “From making monetary donations, all the meals and just being there when needed. It’s been unbelievable, the support in our community. As for the future, we’re going to take one day at a time, keeping her memory alive and making new ones together as a family.” 
 
 Culley said she and her husband have temporary custody of the six children and are set to appear in court this month to obtain permanent custody. The family will talk about adoption in the future, she said. 
 
 Over the past few weeks, the Culleys have expanded their family to care for nine children, ages 2 to 15. Culley said the youngest, Ace, turns 2 on Sunday — a Mickey Mouse-themed day that she hopes will create lasting memories for the children. 
 
 “They know she’s an angel — they know she’s with us every day,” Culley said. “Their favorite thing to do is get balloons and send them up to her. 
 
 “Actually, maybe we’ll do that at the birthday party.” 
 
 On @ABC13News at 7pm, hear more about the local hero who took in all 6 of Beth's kids. pic.twitter.com/yVTShhO05D — Caren Pinto (@CarenRPinto) June 1, 2016 
 
 Culley said her friend’s death was “the most difficult thing I have ever watched.” 
 
 “It felt like I was in slow motion,” she said. “It was heartbreaking.” 
 
 Culley said her family has been blessed — and that’s why she believes they were chosen to bless someone else. 
 
 “People call me an angel — say I’m a hero, but I don’t think anyone in my shoes would have done anything different,” she said, adding: “We believe God has blessed us in our lives, and this is the best thing we can do.” 
 
 As for the promises she made to her friend, Culley says she has kept them all. 
 
 At Laitkep’s funeral, the entire family showed up in pink — and the girls wore matching bows in their hair. 
 
 “They are exceptional kids. You can’t help fall in love with them,” she said about the newest members of the family. “That day was the first day of our new life. I feel like our life is complete now. Those six kids were the six links we were missing from our lives.” 
 
 This story has been updated.
– In late December, a Kentucky woman who was 30 weeks pregnant with quadruplets delivered them early via C-section because of a grim diagnosis: her cancer was back. Having married military police officer Charles Gaytan in early 2016, Kayla Gaytan learned just a week later that she had Hodgkins lymphoma, and endured months of chemotherapy before the cancer went into remission. At that point, however, doctors told her it was unlikely that she'd be able to have kids after the grueling treatment, reports People. When they learned just a few weeks later they were expecting four—conceived naturally—the couple "couldn't believe it," Kayla Gaytan says. All was going well until, 28 weeks into the pregnancy, she was told she'd need more chemo, and urgently. Initially, when Charles Gaytan started up a GoFundMe page to help cover their medical bills, he set a goal of $5,000, and they were surprised to see it gradually tick past $18,000. Then, after the family appeared on Fox News last week, the floodgates opened; the Eagle Post reports that the story went viral in minutes, with several hundred thousand dollars donated in the first few hours. Now, a few days later, more than 16,000 people have donated more than $1.13 million, which includes one anonymous donation of $8,000. "Our family has truly been humbled and amazed by the kindness of people," says Kayla Gaytan, who has been given a 50-50 chance of surviving five years. "We're just in shock." (A 65-year-old woman went through in vitro fertilization to add quads to her 13 children.)