Breaking My Back Promoting New Product. Literally.

Here at the Big Sem­i­nar in Atlanta, the same ques­tion seems to pop up over and over again. I walk with a cane now, and peo­ple keep ask­ing me, “Michel, What’s wrong? Are you OK? What happened?”

I don’t blame them. My wife told me I was turn­ing as white as a ghost, so we’ve decided to go back to our room to take some time — and pres­sure — off my spine.

I thought to myself, “Maybe I should take advan­tage of this down­time to blog about this — that way, more peo­ple will know what’s going on.”

You see, I have a bro­ken back. Literally.

Let me back up a little.

This week­end, one of our goals is try­ing to meet peo­ple and net­work with the crowd to pro­mote our new train­ing sys­tem, Suc­cess Chef.

(That’s one of the perks of being at a seminar!)

We’re try­ing to cre­ate affil­i­ate rela­tion­ships with poten­tial part­ners who can help us pro­mote our new Suc­cess Chef train­ing sys­tem dur­ing our prelaunch phase — we plan on offi­cially launch­ing by late summer.

The prelaunch life­time mem­ber­ship offer has a few open­ings avail­able, along with the spe­cial schol­ar­ship dis­count we make on the full-​​length, 70-​​minute free video.

Plus, I also installed a pub­lic blog dur­ing the prelaunch, which show­cases video pre­views, case stud­ies, and sam­ple tutorials.

You should check it out, too. In fact, if you want to help us pro­mote it as well (we greatly appre­ci­ate it!), here’s where you can sign up to become an affil­i­ate. Suc­cess Chef affil­i­ates earn a gen­er­ous com­mis­sion, and we appre­ci­ate your support.

“Back” to my story.

Some of you may have noticed that I was walk­ing with a cane at the last 2–3 sem­i­nars. At the last few sem­i­nars I spoke at, I had to sit in a chair while on stage to deliver my pre­sen­ta­tion. I just couldn’t stand up.

Here’s the thing.

After a seri­ous car acci­dent over 20 years ago where a taxi blind­sided me, my back would occa­sion­ally go out. Noth­ing seri­ous. Per­haps once to twice a year.

At first, I was able to tol­er­ate the pain. But as the years went by, the spasms became more and more severe, and the pain wouldn’t go away no mat­ter how many over-​​the-​​counter pain med­ica­tions I would take.

Nowa­days, my back seems to go out once a month, and the pain is con­stant. Often­times, unbearable.

So I decided to con­sult with a doc­tor, which was fol­lowed by an MRI of my spine. (The pic­ture at the top of the blog post is an actual scanned pic­ture of my spine, by the way.)

Last month, I got the MRI results back from the spine cen­ter, and it doesn’t look good. Essen­tially, my diag­no­sis shows that I have a her­ni­ated disc, a buldg­ing disc, and arthri­tis in my lum­bard region.

That explains why I am in con­stant pain, walk­ing with a cane eight days out of 10. I can’t even sleep at night because it’s too excru­ci­at­ing. The sad part is, it keeps get­ting worse. The only solu­tion is surgery.

But in addi­tion to degen­er­a­tive disc dis­ease, they found some­thing else.

Believe it or not, I have a bro­ken back!

(This sur­prised me, as you can imagine.)

I have what’s called a “PARS Defect” (or “Spondylolysis”).

PARS is a stress frac­ture where one ver­te­bra is com­pletely “loose”, dis­lo­cated from the rest of the spinal col­umn. Any swift move­ment, heavy lift­ing, or long peri­ods stand­ing up can force it to shift and pull on a nerve, caus­ing my back to spasm and my legs to go numb.

When my back goes out, it lasts for about a week with almost com­plete paral­y­sis. I have to crawl my way to the bath­room. Trust me, it isn’t a pretty sight.

The good part is, I’m get­ting back surgery in late June in Tampa, Florida. They will be using laser to “burn off” the bulge and arthritic tis­sue, and per­form some­thing akin to a “root canal” on the nerve attached to the bro­ken vertebra.

The darn thing is cost­ing me over $30,000! Ouch.

(Remem­ber, being Cana­dian my insur­ance doesn’t cover this. But con­sid­er­ing how much pain I’m in, it’s well worth it.)

Any­way, my back may be a bit of an obsta­cle, but there’s some­thing else. Some­thing I wanted to share with you all but didn’t until now because it’s pretty personal.

Since I’m open­ing myself up, I might as well let it all out.

You see, the last month or so has been pretty chal­leng­ing for us. My mom was diag­nosed with breast can­cer last month.

She had her sur­gi­cal mas­tec­tomy a few weeks ago. Her chemother­apy has started, which will be fol­lowed by radi­a­tion treat­ments in the summer.

She lived with us for a while so we can take care of her — until she went back to the hos­pi­tal to have her ban­dages removed and was able to go back home.

Luck­ily for me (and her), my wife Sylvie was an awe­some sup­port! Her pos­i­tive atti­tude and pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence helped my mom greatly. It made my mom stronger, for sure.

But there’s another rea­son why we felt the need to do this. Because, at the same time, my sis­ter, who suf­fers from an advanced form of dia­betes and lupus, fell into a dia­betic coma and was hooked up to a res­pi­ra­tor for about a week.

She’s fine now and back at home with my mom — they live together along with her hus­band and my two nieces. But at the time, my sis­ter surely wasn’t in a state to take care of my mom.

So hav­ing her stay with us for a cou­ple of weeks not only was the least we could do, but it was also a bless­ing in dis­guise. Because dur­ing that time my wife really made such a pos­i­tive impact on my mom.

She’s in great spir­its and heal­ing nicely.

Nev­er­the­less, as you can see it has been a pretty event­ful two months, to say the least.

I didn’t want to just blog about this to let you know, but also to thank you and let you know how much we appre­ci­ate you and your help.

Keep my mom and my sis­ter in your thoughts and prayers. They mean a lot to us. You mean a lot to us. You guys are amazing.

Now, as my friend John Reese always says, “Back to work!”

(In my case, I might have to take that sit­ting down.)

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
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• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Changes, Relaunches, and Extreme Makeovers
• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales

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