Steve Milton: Wrestling world rallies for Michelle Fazzari fighting Stage 3 cancer
You can't become a world-class athlete without physical and mental strength, self-belief and an unwavering drive to create the best outcome.
And that, says Stephanie Fazzari, will be very helpful to her twin sister as she battles a Stage 3 cancer.
Caledonia's 33-year-old Michelle Fazzari is one of the world's most successful and popular wrestlers. She is regularly ranked among the planet's top 10 in a competitively deep weight division, standing as high as second, has won a Commonwealth Games silver medal, was the 2017 Golden Horseshoe Athlete of the Year, represented Canada at the 2016 Rio Olympics and was well on her way to qualifying for this summer's Tokyo Games before her cancer was finally diagnosed on April 16.
She's now undergoing exhausting chemotherapy and radiation treatment at Hamilton's Juravinski Cancer Centre.
Michelle has the most positive mind set. She's had so many obstacles in her wrestling career with all the injuries, and she overcomes them every time. I have no doubt she will overcome this," Stephanie told The Spectator.
She knows she's going to beat this. She knows it's going to get worse before it gets better, but it will get better. It's just one day at a time and she knows she has a big support system behind her. And she's just so grateful."
On Monday, Stephanie started a GoFundMe account to help Michelle and her husband, C.J. Hudson, cover some extra longer-term expenses associated with her cancer treatment. She'd hoped to reach $15,000, but only four hours later, donations from family, friends, the Niagara region and the national and international wrestling community had already surged past $20,000. By mid-afternoon Friday, nearly $74,000 had been donated by more than 500 different contributors across Canada, the U.S., Europe and South America.
It's easy to raise money for somebody like Michelle," her sister says. It's a message of strength and that the community is behind her, and it shows how Michelle has had such an impact. She's just so important and so loved," she says.
She's always volunteered so much of her time in the community. She's done wrestling programs in so many schools; she'll meet someone in wrestling and then immediately help them train on the mat. She's always been an inspiration to people and I want that positive message to come through."
After taking up wrestling as a teenager on a dare from a friend, Michelle Fazzari won a provincial title for Cayuga Secondary School, three national university championships while studying at Brock, and made her first national team just two years after shoulder surgery that doctors felt would end her athletic career.
In 2015, she competed at the Toronto Pan Am Games just three weeks after she had knee surgery, but was unable to continue past her first match. In the gold medal bout of the 2018 Commonwealth Games she shredded a knee that required serious ACL surgery and long post-operative recovery, but she rebounded to resume successful training and competing.
In early March, she won the gold medal against some of the world's top 62 Kg-division wrestlers at the prestigious Matteo Pellicone tournament in Rome but, her sister recalls, Michelle said at the time she just felt so tired. She had started questioning her health last June when she began feeling weak. This isn't someone who sits back. She immediately began checking with doctors while still continuing her intense training for the Olympics, but it took a long time to get to the root of the problem."
The GoFundMe page says that there were consultations with 10 different doctors and specialists before the cancer diagnosis came on April 16. She was at Juravinski the next day after taking a red-eye flight home from Calgary, where she had been training for the international Olympic qualification tournament in Bulgaria in early May.
We have a really good team working for her and supporting her at Juravinski," Stephanie said.
In broad terms, Stage 3 is often described as a cancer which has grown bigger and spread to tissues surrounding the original cancer, and sometimes to the lymph nodes, as Michelle's cancer has. The lymph nodes act as filters of foreign material, like cancer cells, for the body's immune system.
Michelle, who requires all her physical energy for the treatments, asked Stephanie earlier this week to speak to The Spectator on her behalf. Out of respect for her sister's privacy, Stephanie and the family are not discussing what type of cancer she is battling.
Stephanie explains that she started the fundraiser because, with the support of her oncologist. Michelle is also working with a naturopathic doctor, and that will continue for a long period after her radiation and chemotherapy ends, hopefully in eight or 10 weeks. The vitamin therapy alone is very expensive and isn't covered by funding.
Some of the proceeds, she says, will also go toward Michelle and CJ's emergency fertility journey. Michelle has received emergency treatment, some of it was funded, some was not. It was hard to go through, but she did it."
Michelle's message, Stephanie says, is that she's so grateful to the community, family and friends for the support.
This has hit us hard but we're a very positive bunch and we just know how strong she is. I think about when her scan comes back clear and the party we're going to have to celebrate."
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com