Charl Schwartzel’s wife Rosalind has been identified with breast most cancers.
Thankfully, that prognosis got here early sufficient and remedy is now nicely underway with the general prognosis wanting good.
Rosalind Schwartzel is simply 39.
According to the LIV Golf website, each Rosalind and Charl at the moment are decided to make their private ordeal rely: by doing their best to boost breast most cancers consciousness globally as a lot as they will.
“Rosalind feels like if she could save just one person’s life by getting them to go for a check-up early, then that is a big win,” Charl mentioned.
“She wants to create an awareness for all women. Everybody has got a mom, and most men have wives or sisters, so everybody in some way will maybe get affected by it. So, if there is a way to make people aware of going for their checkups and if you catch cancer early, your survival rate or success rate is just tremendously higher. That’s what Rosalind wants.”
Charl Schwartzel gained the 2011 Masters
During the build-up this week to LIV Golf Adelaide, Charl Schwartzel and his fellow South African Stinger GC team-mates, Branden Grace, Louis Oosthuizen and Dean Burmester, plus the caddies and the whole workforce administration, all shaved their hair to face in solidarity with Rosalind.
To commemorate that joint resolution, Stinger GC posted on Twitter: “In support of the amazing Ros Schwartzel and all women around the world with cancer. If you want to show your support and join us, please send in your photos/videos of you shaving your heads and we will be posting them to help raise further awareness and hopefully save lives.”
Accompanying that Twitter put up was a video, which started with Charl sitting in a barber’s chair previous to shaving off his personal hair. Moments earlier than he set to work with the razor, Charl mentioned: “We’re doing this in support of my wife. She has been incredibly strong with her treatments for breast cancer and the Stingers are showing their support. As her husband, I love her very much. She’s a rock. Here we go.”
Charl and Rosalind started courting in 2008 and bought married in 2010.
By a long way, Rosalind’s breast most cancers prognosis has been the hardest problem they’ve confronted collectively as a pair.
“This is stuff that affects your life,” mentioned Charl, a 39-year-old from Johannesburg who will ceaselessly stay within the historical past books as LIV Golf’s first particular person match champion, having gained the inaugural 2022 occasion in London.
“Sport can provide great opportunities to make people aware of these sorts of things but it’s just something that you do as a living. The breast cancer diagnosis is real life, it’s real life.”
‘Real shock’
Asked how his wife was holding up emotionally and mentally, Charl Schwartzel replied: “It was an actual shock to start with, once we discovered. She’s younger, she’s underneath 40 and it’s not one thing you actually take into consideration, so it was actually a shock. But she’s been so sturdy and so optimistic and everyone round her has proven a lot help and love, and it’s going rather well.
“As a team, we all cut our hair because of her… her hair will mostly all fall out in the next week or two. It’s getting really thin now, and we did it just to support her and start showing some awareness of it.”
The exact same day that Stinger GC’s Twitter put up was printed to showcase the workforce buzzcuts, Rosalind shared her own experience on Instagram in a bid to boost breast most cancers consciousness.
She described how, final November, her 4-year-old son had been playfully wrestling together with her and, accidentally, harm her left breast after leaping on her.
“I was quite injured so, a couple of days later, our amazing nurse practitioner Amanda suggested that I go for an ultrasound,” mentioned Rosalind.
“The physician got here in to say to me that the left breast was excellent, one hundred pc, however they’d discovered one thing in the correct breast. He mentioned it was nonetheless small on the time and we should always simply control it and I ought to come again in six months.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t get to six months. Ten weeks later, I felt a lump in the right breast so I came back and had another ultrasound which showed that it had grown quite significantly and the biopsy turned out to be cancer. I have triple-negative breast cancer.”
‘Don’t wait till you’re 40’
Rosalind had all the time been instructed that girls ought to wait till they had been aged 40 earlier than having ultrasounds or mammograms. She is now not a believer in that.
“I got lucky because if I had waited until I was 40, in September, I would have really been in big trouble,” she mentioned.
“My most cancers would have actually unfold. So, my little man positively saved my life. My message to all of the younger women is don’t wait till you’re 40. Go and have the ultrasound, or have the mammogram. We should be our personal advocates on the subject of our well being and, on the finish of the day, it’s simply not value taking the danger to attend.
“Look at my story. If I had waited, I would have been worse off than I am now. So, I am actually six weeks of treatments in, and I still have got quite a lot more chemo to go through, and then I will have surgery and then radiation but I have really got a strong support system, such amazing friends and family and a husband who has been my rock every day.”
Rosalind has been receiving remedy on the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, one of many world’s most revered facilities devoted solely to most cancers affected person care, analysis, training and prevention.
It is similar hospital during which Phil Mickelson’s wife Amy was efficiently handled 15 years in the past.
In complete, Rosalind might be handled by a 16-week dose-intense, chemotherapy routine.
Meanwhile, one other South African {golfing} legend, Ernie Els, alongside along with his wife and two kids, despatched their greatest wishes to the Rosalind.
Writing on Facebook, Els mentioned: “Sending our very best wishes to @rosschwartzel. We’re all with you Ros, keep up your fight. We love and support you. From the whole Els family. ❤️”
In addition, The South African web site extends its greatest wishes to each Rosalind and Charl.
