Just days before her wedding, Sylvie Fortin was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“Now we had to face whether or not we would be telling our family at the wedding. We opted not to and decided to tell everyone after the honeymoon,” said Ms. Fortin, an Ottawa entrepreneur.
People were startled by her and her new husband’s announcement because they were able to pull off a huge wedding with no one knowing.
When they came back from the honeymoon her doctor told her a mastectomy (removal of the breast) was needed and then she would have to undergo chemotherapy.
“We knew that our lives were about to change dramatically in the coming months.”
After the initial shock of the diagnosis Ms. Fortin said it donned on her there was really no good reason for this to have happened.
“It was out of the blue, and certainly not anything anyone ever expects.”
What she realized was that even though there was no good reason for this to have happened, she could turn it into something positive.
She decided to share her story through her online blog because she found it therapeutic, both for her and other people living with breast cancer. She knew she wanted to use her illness to help other people.
“I set out to make a conscious effort, for everything that was difficult I was going to spin it into something a lot more positive.”
One of the things she knew was going to happen was she was going to lose her hair to chemotherapy.
“I had this long curly hair my entire life. It was something that was my pride and joy and I didn’t imagine cutting my hair short let alone shaving it off. So when I found out I was going to lose my hair I thought this cannot go to waste and decided to donate it instead.”
So, Ms. Fortin decided to shave her head before she started losing it and donated it to, Locks of Love (
www.locksoflove.org), a charity that gives custom-made human hair wigs to children with cancer.
Just this act of generosity would be enough for most people but Fortin decided to do more by selling virtual real estate on her bald head to people who pledged donations to the Avon Foundation’s Breast Cancer Crusade.
A $50 donation granted the donor one inch of head space which was blogged live with the video of the head shaving event at
www.breastcancervictory.com. People can click on a link that will take them to a donor website. Her shave-a-thon raised more then $13,000 for the Avon Foundation and provided many inches of hair for children’s wigs.
Although she is located in Ottawa she decided she needed to spread her message around the country as cancer is something that affects most people in some way at some point in their life.
“Breast cancer knows no boundaries.”
The message that she wants to give to people is that going through anything difficult, from cancer to divorce to unemployment, is there is nothing that has to get a person down.
“Anything difficult can be turned into a positive but it takes some creative imagination,” Ms. Fortin explained. “It is my hope that other people who encounter difficulties can read this and gain strength from knowing that they are not alone.”
Her blog, which she describes as her therapy and a way of sharing her story in a positive light can be found at
http://here-is-more.info/?i=100604/CancerCureBlogLabels: Avon Foundation, Avon Foundation’s Breast Cancer Crusade, Breast Cancer, Cancer, Cancer cure, Cancer eBook, charity, chemotherapy, eBook, Entrepreneur, mastectomy
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