Sylvie Fortin: My Teacher

Now that the wed­ding and hon­ey­moon are over, I want to share with you some impor­tant news, as there are many things I need to explain but didn’t want to share until today.

After much reflec­tion, we decided to make this infor­ma­tion pub­lic for a vari­ety of rea­sons. One is to offer our apolo­gies. Another is to cre­ate aware­ness about an incred­i­bly impor­tant issue.

First, the apologies.

You may be expect­ing us to see us speak at an upcom­ing event — such as the Focus 4 The Future in the UK this week­end, in Las Vegas at the World Inter­net Sum­mit, or in Bal­ti­more at the Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Main Event in September.

How­ever, we’ve decided to make some dras­tic changes to our plans for the next few weeks. And that includes can­celling our travel and speak­ing sched­ules for Sep­tem­ber and early October.

Here’s why…

You see, prior to get­ting mar­ried, as we were get­ting ready for the most won­der­ful day of our lives, life threw us a curveball.

Sylvie was diag­nosed with breast can­cer.

It started when she dis­cov­ered a lump on her left breast in June, after­which she under­went a series of tests includ­ing ultra­sound, mam­mo­gram, MRI and then biopsy.

As she went in the hos­pi­tal this morn­ing for her biopsy, it was con­firmed: the can­cer is at an advanced stage and treat­ments need to start imme­di­ately, includ­ing surgery.

Treat­ments could have started before the wed­ding. How­ever, we decided to wait because we didn’t want this loom­ing over our heads dur­ing the most won­der­ful day of our lives.

(And the doc­tor con­curred and even sug­gested it.)

In fact, as Sylvie said to her doc­tor, we didn’t want to make this infor­ma­tion pub­lic before the wed­ding because “we only wanted tears of joy at our wedding.”

Inci­den­tally, this is just a small hur­dle. We will be back on our feet faster than you can say “heal.” That’s a guarantee!

Now, I don’t mean to sound as if I’m belit­tling such an impor­tant issue. I’m not. But Sylvie is one of the most pos­i­tive, com­pas­sion­ate, lov­ing and full-​​of-​​life peo­ple I’ve ever met.

She knows this is a small hur­dle, and under­stands that heal­ing begins from the inside-​​out — not the other way around.

That said, the last thing she ever wanted was sym­pa­thetic notes from friends and fam­ily dur­ing a time where Sylvie wanted to keep her envi­ron­ment as pos­i­tive and as non-​​toxic as pos­si­ble, not only for the wed­ding but also for her healing.

I must also add that Sylvie is such an amaz­ing exam­ple of courage and strength. She’s teach­ing me so much and so many other peo­ple on the power of com­pas­sion, under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of life. (I love you so much, Baby.)

Nev­er­the­less, after the doctor’s appoint­ment today, we now know the extent of the can­cer and the treat­ment required.

Sylvie will be get­ting a full mas­tec­tomy of her left breast (i.e., breast removal), and chemother­apy will soon ensue after the surgery as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure to help stop it from spreading.

The surgery will be booked tomor­row, and it will take place next week (in about 7 days). We don’t know how much chemo until the day of the surgery late next week, as the doc­tors will carry out a pathol­ogy on the can­cer tis­sue dur­ing the surgery itself.

This will tell us how much chemo will be needed post-​​operatively, as some satel­lite can­cer cells were dis­cov­ered around the lump, which has grown to the size of two golf balls.

Why chemother­apy? The chemo is required to stop the can­cer from spread­ing to the more impor­tant lym­phn­odes, which is much harder to con­trol and heal.

This obvi­ously forces us to can­cel our trips. As you can imag­ine, she will def­i­nitely not be in a state to travel or work. I will also take some time off to be with Sylvie and take care of her, so I won’t be avail­able to speak, either.

So for those of you who booked sem­i­nar tick­ets in the hope of see­ing us speak, I apol­o­gize. Thanks for your help and your understanding.

Nev­er­the­less, I want to remind you how beau­ti­ful and pas­sion­ate my wife is. She is vibrant, full of energy and incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful. Her beauty will not be dimin­ished in any way, and if any­thing, her strength and wis­dom as she tack­les this very tem­po­rary chal­lenge only make her more beau­ti­ful in my eyes.

I’m so proud of her.

And I’m proud to have mar­ried the most won­der­ful per­son in the world: my best friend.

At the same time, I encour­age you to give gen­er­ously to the breast can­cer research and aware­ness. It’s so impor­tant that peo­ple under­stand what breast can­cer is, how it can affect any woman any age (Sylvie is a very young 36!), and how early detec­tion is mon­u­men­tally important.

If you want some help, here’s a post I made a month ago where I made a “blog con­test” between my friend Armand Morin and I, where I gave to an online Breast Can­cer charity.

The other site of note is the Breast Can­cer Research Foun­da­tion (visit the web­site and sim­ply click on the link that says “donate” to donate online).

Luk­ily, the right breast is nor­mal and the prog­no­sis is incred­i­bly bright.

Another pos­i­tive out­come is, this will force us to stay at home more, spend more time with each other, take time to slow down and enjoy life more, and focus more on cre­at­ing addi­tional pas­sive streams of income in our busi­nesses that require less atten­tion and energy.

We will keep you posted. Heck, we will be back on our feet in no time. We are still sched­uled to speak at the Big Sem­i­nar at the end of Octo­ber, which still looks fea­si­ble for the time being. If you’re inter­ested in learn­ing more about it, visit the Big Sem­i­nar web­site.

Until then, my friends, please keep Sylvie in your thoughts.

About the Author

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