During her eighth and final show in The O2 Arena on April 5, the always charming Adele cracked jokes about being frightened by her own appearance on the Jumbotron and talking about looking ridiculous after having lip fillers when a sign in the audience caught her attention. “Oh, that’s a nice sign. ‘NYC → London For Adele!! Bucket list, cancer survivor,’” she read. “Well, come on up here. Come on.”
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When 43-year-old Puerto Rican Zulema Arroyo-Farley reached the stage, she began to cry as Adele consoled her. Through tears, Arroyo-Farley explained that she and her husband had also made it to Adele’s seventh show in The O2 the night before. After attending the first concert, Arroyo-Farley felt overcome with emotion and decided to create the sign for the next concert, which she attended with a friend.
“I made this sign because I came last night, and I was so touched, and I couldn’t get tickets for New York,” Arroyo-Farley said. “Oh, we’ll give you tickets for New York,” Adele chimed in, before complimenting her on her “half Puerto Rican, half New York” accent and her eyes.
Then, Adele asked Arroyo-Farley about her fight with cancer. “Thank you for the audience,” she said. “Sarcoma survivors are going to be so touched to raise awareness. Less than 100,000 people are diagnosed with this type of cancer. It grows in your muscles, and it grows and you don’t know that it’s there until it actually is killing you. There’s no targeted therapy, no chemo, no drugs, because the amount of people that suffer from this disease is so low that the pharmaceutical companies are not incentivized to create drugs for it. The UK is actually at the forefront of this.”
Doctors couldn’t remove all of Arroyo-Farley’s cancer, but she’s dedicated her time to raising awareness for sarcoma. She founded Artz Cure Sarcoma, where she works to raise money for MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston – a comprehensive cancer center – and the work Puerto Rican Dr. Keila Torres does there.
[H/T People En Español]