Dustin Snyder, who has terminal cancer, is set to have his dying wish come true this weekend. 
 
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 The 19-year-old, who is in a hospice with a pain pump connected to his heart, will marry his high school sweetheart, Sierra Siverio. 
 
 "I'm blessed that he has her and that all the time that he's gone through, she's literally been by his side the whole time," Cassandra Fondahn tells ABC News. "That's a lot for a 19-year-old girl." 
 
 Courtesy Brittany Hails 
 
 Snyder has been battling synovial sarcoma since being diagnosed a day before his 18th birthday. After surgery to remove the affected lung and chemotherapy, doctors reported the cancer was gone. Three weeks ago, Dustin was rushed to the hospital when he started experiencing abdominal pain. 
 
 Courtesy Brittany Hails 
 
 His cancer had returned, taking over his stomach and pelvic area. 
 
 Courtesy Brittany Hails 
 
 But now Snyder can look forward a wedding. 
 
 He has been with Siverio for a little over two years but the two have known each other since they were young. They had dated in middle school but had lost touch until Siverio walked into the Steak and Shake that Snyder was working in. 
 
 Courtesy Brittany Hails 
 
 The two have been inseparable ever since. 
 
 Fondahn says the plan to have the wedding came about on Monday with Dustin's sister Brittany Hails setting up a Go Fund Me page to pay for the wedding. The page has received more than $14,098 as of Friday evening, but a wedding dress, tuxedo, photographer and even the venue, The Big Red Barn, have also been donated to the couple. 
 
 Hails tells ABC News that she and her sisters have helped all they could for the wedding but for the community to come together with this is a blessing. 
 
 On Friday, Hails said in a statement that she was "overwhelmed by the love and support by the community." 
 
 "We have made our goal for the wedding but any extra will be going for the cost for when the day comes for Dustin to be at rest," Hails said. "I love and appreciate everyone so much." 
 
 LifePath Hospice is also donating the flowers and bridesmaid dresses for the wedding. 
 
 The couple will be married this Sunday at The Big Red Barn surrounded by friends and family. ||||| VALRICO — On the way out of Chili’s, Dustin Snyder dropped to one knee. 
 
 After two years together, Snyder and his girlfriend Sierra Siverio started talking seriously about marriage on Monday. 
 
 On Thursday, he proposed after dinner. 
 
 The young couple can’t waste any time. Snyder, 19, has a rare form of cancer. Doctors say he has weeks, maybe a month to live. 
 
 But Snyder and Siverio aren’t focusing on that. 
 
 They have a wedding to plan. 
 
 ••• 
 
 They met at Mulrennan Middle School in Valrico. He was a brown-haired class clown, recalled Siverio, 21. 
 
 "He was a dorky kid," she said. But she was smitten. 
 
 Their middle school romance lasted through sixth grade, until Snyder’s family moved to Lithia and he transferred to Randall Middle School. They lost touch until 2015, when she walked into a Valrico Steak ’n Shake to apply for a job. She was shocked to see Snyder working the grill. They picked up where they left off. 
 
 "He’s just so fun to be around," Siverio said. "He brings people up." 
 
 On June 27, 2016 — the day before his 18th birthday — Dustin went to the hospital with chest pains. His mom thought it was asthma, but the next day doctors diagnosed him with synovial sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that targets soft tissue and is more common among teenagers and young adults. 
 
 "When I first found out I was devastated, but then he told me I needed to be strong for him," Siverio said. "Ever since he said that I’ve been by his side." 
 
 Later that week, surgeons removed Snyder’s lung and began chemotherapy and radiation treatment. 
 
 The cancer went into remission. Snyder and Siverio moved into a Valrico townhouse together. A few weeks later, the cancer returned, this time on Snyder’s bladder. Doctors removed part of that tumor but the cancer would return a third time, spreading throughout Snyder’s stomach and pelvis. Doctors said there’s no way to operate. 
 
 A few weeks ago, Snyder began hospice care. 
 
 On Monday, the couple started talking about marriage. Siverio asked when he wanted to get married. As soon as possible, he said. 
 
 "After her being there with me through this cancer, always supporting me and loving me, that’s when I knew she was the one," Snyder said. "I wanted to give her something back before my time was up." 
 
 The next day, Snyder’s sister Brittany Hails posted her brother’s story on Facebook along with a request for a donated ring and tuxedo. 
 
 Within minutes, offers started pouring in. They continued as the story spread on news and social media. A woman donated a diamond ring. Several people donated tuxedos, but Snyder took an offer by the Men’s Warehouse to fit him with a new one. A company called Solid Asset Solution in Tampa donated a wedding dress — blue sequins with a sweetheart neckline and a long flowing train like Elsa the Snow Queen in Disney’s Frozen — and seven dresses for Siverio’s maid of honor and bridesmaids. The Big Red Barn in Plant City offered to host the wedding and reception on Sunday. 
 
 Hails started a GoFundMe page to cover other costs and had raised nearly $13,000 by Friday. On Thursday, Hails posted an update, saying they had met their goal for the wedding and the donations left over will go to help the family with other expenses, including the costs "when the day comes for Dustin to be at rest." 
 
 "I didn’t think it would go this far, but God was on our side," said Hails, 27. "Dustin’s really excited, and all we wanted is for him to be happy. And he’s happy right now. " 
 
 ••• 
 
 The couple say they have been shocked and overwhelmed by the support from strangers. 
 
 "It’ been amazing to see people in the community coming together and helping me out and supporting my family after everything we’ve been through," Snyder said. 
 
 Siverio admits her heart breaks with the reality of her fiance’s diagnosis, but she also believes God, not doctors, will decide, and that they’ll be together again eventually. 
 
 "Like I tell Dustin, no matter what, it’s not the end," she said. "I feel like this is the beginning." 
 
 For now, she said, she will focus on making her husband’s life the best it can be, not how much time he has left. 
 
 It’s a philosophy the couple shares. 
 
 "The more you think about it, the worse it gets," he said. "I just like to keep that off my mind and think positively and live life as much as I can until the day I die." 
 
 ï¿½ 
 
 UPDATE: Dustin and Sierra were married on Sunday, Jan. 28, 2018, at the Big Red Barn. 
 
 ï¿½ 
 
 Contact Tony Marrero at [email protected] or (813) 226-3374. Follow @tmarrerotimes. ||||| Two-year-old Israel Stinson was declared brain-dead and put on life support in April 2016. "I know you're going to come out of this, baby," his mother Jonee Fonseca tearfully said as she tickled and tried to wake him. Stinson was removed from life support on Aug. 25 after a long court battle. (Life Legal Defense Foundation) 
 
 It all started with an asthma attack. 
 
 Israel Stinson was an adorable toddler with a sweet smile and unruly hair. But on April 1, he began having trouble breathing. After he was taken to a northern California hospital, the unthinkable happened: Israel suffered a heart attack. After 40 minutes of CPR, doctors were able to restart his heart. But nearly an hour without oxygen had left him brain dead, they determined. 
 
 That’s when the battle began. 
 
 Stinson’s parents did not believe the doctors. Nathaniel Stinson and Jonee Fonseca went to court to demand that Israel be kept on life support in the hope that he would recover. 
 
 “Israel’s medical chart … said he was deceased. But Israel is ALIVE!” Fonseca wrote. “God is telling me not to let go.” 
 
 When courts ruled against them, the parents flew their son to Central America in a desperate attempt to find him treatment. 
 
 The four-month saga came to an abrupt end Thursday, however, when a judge issued a surprise ruling against the parents. Israel was taken off a ventilator and quickly stopped breathing. 
 
 This time there was no disagreement. 
 
 “He’s gone,” his mother tearfully told the Sacramento Bee on Thursday afternoon. 
 
 After Israel’s parents posted emotional but controversial videos of their son’s condition online, the tragic case drew national attention and sparked debate over conflicting medical, legal and religious definitions of “death.” What doctors dismissed as Israel’s involuntary muscle twitches, the family saw as intentional responses. 
 
 The debate echoes previous cases, some of which became causes célèbres. The most famous was that of Terri Schiavo, a woman with brain damage whose parents fought for years to keep her alive until a judge ultimately granted her husband’s wish to have her feeding tube removed. In 2013, 13-year-old Jahi McMath was declared brain dead after a tonsillectomy went tragically wrong. Her family is still fighting to keep her on life support. 
 
 [Why a family fights over their ‘healthy and beautiful’ daughter, legally dead since 2013] 
 
 Thursday’s events are unlikely to dampen the decades-old national debate. 
 
 A pro-life group representing Israel and his family pro-bono told The Washington Post the outcome was “cruel” and potentially criminal. 
 
 “In no circumstances ever, ever should somebody be put to death without due process of law,” said Alexandra Snyder of the Life Legal Defense Foundation, adding that the family felt state law entitled them to consult another doctor before Israel was taken off life support. 
 
 Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles told The Post it could not comment because of “privacy regulations.” Israel had already been declared brain dead by three doctors at two hospitals, Snyder says, although she said the family questioned those diagnoses. 
 
 Israel’s sad story began this spring. 
 
 “April 1 was the last time I was able to see my son speaking and hearing his voice,” Fonseca, a pharmacy technician, said in a YouTube video. That is when Israel suffered a severe asthma attack. After he was taken to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, his condition deteriorated. He suffered a heart attack that left him brain dead, according to a doctor, and in need of a ventilator to breathe. 
 
 The toddler was then transferred to another hospital, Kaiser Permanente in Roseville, Calif., where two more doctors determined that he was brain dead. He could not breathe or maintain a heartbeat on his own and had no hope of recovery, they said. 
 
 Israel’s parents, however, disagreed. 
 
 According to Snyder, the boy’s parents “distrusted” the diagnosis at UC Davis because they felt their son’s heart attack might have been prevented. “There were things that undermined their trust,” Snyder said. They also rejected the opinions of the doctors at Kaiser, which the parents felt was too quick to rule Israel brain dead. 
 
 Doctors put Israel on a diet of dextrose, or sugar. But his family felt the hospital was mistreating him. 
 
 “Israel is essentially starving and Kaiser refuses to give him the necessary protein, fat and vitamins intravenously,” they wrote. “They simply refuse to.” 
 
 Kaiser even issued a California death certificate for Israel but the parents refused to sign it, according to the Bee. 
 
 Instead, his parents set up a GoFundMe page asking for money to help them find another hospital to help Israel. 
 
 “We will use your contribution to fight Kaiser Permanente Roseville Medical Center in Sacramento and to pay for an air medical transfer to another hospital, likely in another state,” they wrote. “Israel means apple of God’s eye and he truly is a child of God with a lot of fight in him!” 
 
 “We are a Christian family,” Nathaniel Stinson said in an April 29 video. “We are actually looking for any hospital right now that would actually take our son. He’s currently on life support but we do believe he is still alive. He is actually moving a lot more the last couple of days. And we think our son does have a chance.” 
 
 They also posted moving videos showing Israel reacting to being tickled. 
 
 “Israel baby, Mommy’s here. I’m gonna tickle you one more time. Do it one more time,” Fonseca can be heard saying in one video. “There you go. There you go. His blood pressure’s going way up. Oh, you can hear Mommy and you can feel Mommy, huh? Israel, you gotta stop fooling everybody. How long is it going to take, huh? I know you’re going to come out of this, baby.” 
 
 The videos drew sympathy and donations but did not spur any hospitals to take Israel in. 
 
 So Israel’s mother filed an injunction to prevent Kaiser from taking the boy off his ventilator. 
 
 On May 13, a federal judge rejected that suit, the Bee reported. 
 
 “While Ms. Fonseca’s maternal instincts and moral position are completely understandable,” U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller wrote, “the concerns reviewed here suggest she is unlikely to obtain the relief she seeks, and weigh against a preliminary injunction based on the law this court is sworn to apply and uphold.” 
 
 “I’m a parent and I can’t imagine how this family must feel,” Wade Smith, director of the neurointensive care unit at the University of California at San Francisco told the newspaper. “But this is a situation in medicine where we have very clear absolutes. This child will never wake up. … It is really hard for a physician to bring the news to a parent that their child has died. But that’s the reality. I’m sad for the parents and sorry for the situation. But at some point, they have to accept it and move on.” 
 
 Israel’s parents did move on, but not in the way the doctor expected. 
 
 On May 22, just days before a deadline to prove their case or pull the plug, they swept Israel out of the country. 
 
 “Victory!!! Israel Stinson was transferred out of Kaiser Permanente yesterday!!! He has been taken to another facility and is already receiving care!!!” his parents wrote online. “Due to the sensitivity of Israel’s case, we are not yet ready to disclose where he is, but we can say this … in order for Israel to receive his badly needed care, he had to be transferred out of the United States. That’s right.” 
 
 The sudden flight out of the country was funded by more than $20,000 the family had received, mostly from strangers. 
 
 “Because of you all and your generous donations, Israel was able to beat the odds and is now being cared for as a live human being,” they wrote. 
 
 The mystery country, it turned out, was Guatemala, where Snyder had helped the family gain admission to a private hospital. There, doctors did what American doctors had refused, giving Israel feeding and breathing tubes. 
 
 They also gave the parents hope. 
 
 According to Snyder, three Guatemalan doctors, including a neurologist, declared that the boy was not brain dead after all. 
 
 That diagnosis was based in part on EEG, or electroencephalogram, tests, used to measure electrical activity in the brain, she said. 
 
 Snyder declined to name the Guatemalan doctors or their hospital but dismissed the idea that their opinion weighed less than that of American doctors. 
 
 “We’re not talking voodoo here,” she told The Post. “They have access to the same equipment as American doctors. Many of them probably have degrees from American medical schools.” 
 
 From Guatemala, the family posted more videos in which they said Israel was improving. 
 
 “My son Israel is doing a lot better now that he’s getting the help he needed,” Nathaniel Stinson wrote on Facebook on June 8. “Kaiser is in big trouble for not treating my son.” 
 
 Then, after about three months in Central America, Israel suddenly returned to the United States. 
 
 Despite the pending death certificate, and possibly because of the EEG tests from Guatemala, he had been accepted as a patient at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. 
 
 Again, the family was jubilant. 
 
 “In the beginning we were told Israel would not make it past a month, they told us his organs would slowly shut down, they said if we fed him it would kill him, they told us to give up and let go,” they wrote. “But God had a different plan and he has never given up on us, Israel’s organs are functioning just fine and he is being well fed even gaining lots of weight and now he is stable enough to take home less than 5 months after the injury occurred. It just goes to show that Doctors are only human and God has the ultimate say.” 
 
 Within days, however, the new hospital also moved to take the boy off life support. Once again, the family sought an injunction. And on Aug. 11, they received a temporary restraining order blocking the hospital from taking Israel off his ventilator. 
 
 Then, on Thursday, came a final, sudden twist in the international medical saga. 
 
 A Los Angeles Superior Court judge removed the restraining order, saying the case had already been decided at state and federal level before the family traveled to Guatemala. 
 
 And with that, doctors turned off Israel’s ventilator. 
 
 “I heard them disconnect the ventilator and then heard, of course, a very grieving mother,” said Snyder, who was on the phone with Fonseca at the time. 
 
 “They’re understandably devastated,” she told The Post. “What happened today was just so awful. Obviously a young child lost his life, but the way it happened, the way the hospital went about removing his life support, is exactly what should never happen to any family anywhere in this country.” 
 
 “They killed him,” Kevin Snider told the Bee. He is chief attorney for the Pacific Justice Institute, a group that defends religious freedom and also represents Israel’s family. 
 
 Alexandra Snyder, from LLDF, called the judge’s decision “unexpected” and said she was in court with Fonseca just last week. She said the hospital should not have turned off Israel’s ventilator until the parents got to see another, “independent” neurologist and that one had already agreed, although she refused to give his name. 
 
 She also said Israel’s parents were not asking the courts to keep him in the hospital forever, but rather wanted to take him home, and that the hospital’s hands were not tied by Thursday’s court ruling. 
 
 “What I really don’t understand is why this hospital agreed to take this little boy in the first place,” she told The Post, saying the boy’s parents never would have brought Israel back to the United States if they had known the hospital was going to pull the plug. “They knew exactly what his condition was, what his treatment was, and they agreed to take him. But it appears they only accepted him as a patient to put him to death. … 
 
 “The irony is this little boy was cared for so much better in Guatemala than he was here,” she added. 
 
 Snyder said Israel’s parents, who also have a 1-year-old daughter, were too distraught to talk Thursday night. 
 
 “They are tremendous people,” she said. “The way they fought for their son was truly heroic.”
– Dustin Snyder and Sierra Siverio are moving fast. The Tampa Bay Times reports Snyder proposed to his girlfriend of two years after leaving a Chili's in Florida on Thursday. They'd only been talking about marriage since Monday, and they're getting hitched on Sunday. But you have to move fast when doctors give you less than a month to live and marrying your high-school sweetheart is one of your dying wishes. "I wanted to give her something back before my time was up," Snyder says. The 19-year-old has synovial sarcoma, a rare cancer, and doctors say there's nothing they can do, according to WTSP. ABC News reports Snyder is in hospice with a pain pump connected to his heart. But that won't stop him from declaring his love for Siverio in front of friends and family this weekend. Snyder and Siverio dated in middle school and reconnected as seniors in high school when Siverio showed up to the Steak and Shake where Snyder was working. "I'm blessed that he has her," Snyder's mom, Cassandra Fondahn, says. "She's literally been by his side the whole time." Siverio says Snyder was her "first love," and Snyder says she "means the world" to him. “She was there with me since the beginning, and I couldn't imagine being with anyone else,” he tells WTSP. Now the community has come together to give them a wedding, donating a dress, photographer, venue, and even a diamond ring. “I can't believe the amount of people that have reached out to help,” Fondahn says. Another $13,000 or so in donations will help the young couple tie the knot.