June 11, So Much To Talk About

June 11, 2018 So Much To Talk About

3 Months Cancer Free

Celebration day! On May 29th I had my first 3 month check up after my surgery. I asked all of you for prayer and it worked …thank you! Great news is the doctor said everything looked great! If my memory is correct, I will see my surgeon every 3 months for the first year and then every 6 months for 5 years.
Now that I have had the first part of reconstructive surgery I will no longer have mammograms. They said if the breast cancer comes back in the breast you will see and feel it right way because it would be between your pec muscle and skin since there is no longer any breast tissue. So May 29th was a good day!!!

I’m still having the neuropathy in feet, hip pain, the expander pain and uncomfortableness and the pain in my arms is also still there. I think I will have to see a neurologist for that. I’m hoping that this arm pain has nothing to do my cancer and that maybe I’ve done something in my neck causing a nerve issue and that can be adjusted or something.
The pain really is the worse when I go to bed. About an hour after laying down this shooting pain comes from the top of my right arm down through the center of it into my hand causing my hand to go numb. It also happens when I type on my computer…like right now! I have to take breaks and shake my arm. My thumb has been numb for three weeks now. A friend thinks it could have something to do with my expanders putting pressure on a nerve or something. I have to call a doctor this week and figure it out. It’s very painful.
I was talking to another friend who had breast cancer the year before me. We were talking about all of our aches and pains and I told her that I’ve stopped talking so much about it to my other friends so much because I didn’t always want to be the Debbie Downer! But I told her that If I dare told my friends of every pain I had all day and all night they would think I was lying. It’s hard to not share it when you are hurting all the time and when you plow through and not speak up people think you are fine and think you can do anything now when that simply is not the truth. It hurts me to even run the vacuum. The pushing and pulling hurts my pec muscles. But after 9 months of not doing much that get’s really old!! So the last month I’ve really tried to step it up and do more things even if it hurts.

Again, I’m not saying all of this to complain, I’m just telling it as it is so others may know what to expect if they have to go through what I’m going through. And..if anyone has any advice for me, it’s always welcomed!

In a sense I guess you get use to living with the pain. I still don’t know how I’ve gone this long and only manage a couple hours of sleep at night and those are not solid sleep hours. Cancer can cause insomnia on top of all the pain you go through. I haven’t really slept at all since my diagnosis in August of last year and yes I’ve tried sleep aids and other things but nothing works. I have a high tolerance to drugs. Oxycodone doesn’t even phase me. I’m praying that once I have my

June 5th, “FIGHT LIKE A GIRL” RELEASE

Today the song I wrote, “Fight Like A Girl” was officially released to iTunes for pre-sale! Pre-sales are very important in the industry. I appreciate every one of you who has purchased the pre-sale! I wrote this song about my cancer journey but as I was writing it I wanted to write it about any kind of fight that a person can go through. I want it to encourage everyone. That no matter what your battle is, you have to fight through it and to NOT give up! I have another reason for this song. My goal is to raise a lot of noise with this song to help spread breast cancer awareness and encourage woman to make sure they get there yearly mammograms AND eventually raise money for breast cancer research with this song. I am meeting with a couple people in the next few weeks that work at cancer research centers. My hope is that some proceeds of this song can be donated to breast cancer research!!! I hope to bring you good news on that soon!
Please help us and pre-order the song today at iTunes.com There is a smart url link on my Anita Cochran Music Facebook page that will take you right to it. Remember to hit the buy button and not the stream.

Copy and paste this link:    http://smarturl.it/ACFightLikeaGirl  then hit the BUY button NOT the iTunes button.

We also shot a video for the song that I’m very excited about! This video will be released very soon!!!!

June 5, CMA Festival

So every year the Country Music Association (CMA) puts on the biggest country music festival called CMA Fest. The streets of Nashville and surrounding areas are packed full. Hotels are overflowing, traffic is a nightmare ha ha, but if you are a country music fan you really need to come to this. There are stages all over the river front area where country artists perform all day. From brand new artists to Garth Brooks! Almost every artist performs somewhere.

I have not performed a full show since last year during CMA Fest. I had the month of July off and then found out I had cancer in August and my doctor took me off the road in September. So, this week was great because I finally got to play some great music with some great people and it was longer than 3 songs! Lets say more like 3 hours!

I was the music director for the “Love and Acceptance show” which is an extraordinary show filled with chart topping artists to support equality for everyone that Ty Herndon/CMT/GLAAD sponsor. I rehearsed the band on June 5th and 6th. It was so great to play with the band again. I put together 6 incredible musicians to be the house band to play for all the artists that performs at this event. It was such a great night!! From new artists like Cassedee Pope, Cam, to Terri Clark, Tanya Tucker, Billy Dean, and the surprise guest Vince Gill!!!!

It felt soon great to be on stage again playing my guitar and singing. I will say this…my fingers hurt REALLY bad. When you play a stringed instrument you develop callouses on the tips of your fingers. Your skin is hard and it actually helps you push down on the strings and it affects your playing as well. I’ve had callouses on my fingers since I was about 4 years old. During my chemo treatment of about 6 months up until now I have been so sick that I didn’t even play my guitar. I have NEVER gone that long without playing so ….I LOST my callouses! Not only did this make me sad because it hurt, it made me sad to think that cancer made me so sick that I couldn’t even play my guitar for months.
But….Baby I’m back!

June 6th CMA Fest

I left band rehearsals and shot on over to Terri Clarks fan club party. She asked me to come play a couple of songs with her and it was so much fun! She has some great fans and they have been so supportive of me! The Hatbrats are awesome and fun people! They surprised me with a beautiful box they made and filled it with get well and encouragement cards for me. So very sweet of them!!!

Of course when Terri brought me on stage she made me cry. She has been a solid rock for me through my battle. What a true friend!!!

I went home and snuggled up on the couch with my sweet big Old English Sheepdog Molly and read the cards and cried again ha ha. I’ve cried a lot this year!

June 7th CMA SHOWTIME

I got up this morning feeling very tired. I still don’t sleep at all from all the pain issues I’m having. From not really doing anything for months to all of this during CMA fest has already wore me out. This morning, I have to go have a chemo treatment! Ugh! I went to Chemo really dreading it but I’m counting down! One more down!

I will be so happy when October comes and chemo will be finished!
I left chemo and headed home to get my guitar and clothes for soundcheck and for the show tonight. Really, I just wanted to go back to bed but I had to push myself to get into the car and go!
I got to the Wildhorse where the show was going to be and sweet Bonnie Hadden met me at the door, helped me take my stuff inside and then parked my car for me! I’m not supposed to lift anything over 15 pounds because of my expanders so THANK YOU BONNIE!

Soundcheck took about 4 hours! I was now really ready for bed and the show hasn’t even started. Hello coffee. We just had enough time to eat a little and change for the show. The show was incredible and the band was awesome!!!
Ty asked if they could play some of my video to “Fight Like A Girl” and he talked about my cancer journey and of course he made me cry! He is my brother!
After that I sang my song “What If I Said” trying to hold back my tears. Ty joined in to help me sing. It was so great singing with him again!!!!! The audience sure made me feel good and gave me a great “Welcome Back”! For the first time it was actually kind of hard for me to sing that song all the way through. It has a lot of words because I wrote it as a duet and Ty will only sing on the chorus parts so I have to cover the girl and the guys part during the rest of the song. I struggled a bit to get through the whole song. Maybe just because I was so tired and the fact I hadn’t sang the whole song that way in over a year but I still had a great time.

 

It was also a lot of fun when Terri Clark came out on stage! Not only is Terri a best buddy but I toured with Terri for many years so it was great to get to sing with her again!

The surprise guest of the night was Vince Gill. I was super excited about this. Vince and I have been friends for many years but this will only be the second time I’ve performed with him on stage. He was a HUGE influence on me as a guitar player and all around artist in general. Vince was one of the artist that in my younger years I would sit in my bedroom and play his songs over and over learning how to play his solos. To this day, Vince writes the best guitar solos. They are so melodic that you want to sing along to his solos. I’ve learned a lot from him so it was great to get to perform with him again. He started off with one of my favorite songs of his “Whenever You Come Around”. When the solo part came he stepped backwards towards me and as I was waiting to hear him play his beautiful solo he looked at me and nodded his head for me to do the solo! Well…the only thing I could think of was “what? I’ve lost my callouses and my thumb is completely numb and Vince is asking me to play his solo??” Ha!!! I managed to make my way through it! He is so great. He then had each band member play a solo. He’s a true musician at heart!  There is a video on my Anita Cochran Music facebook page of us playing.  The file is too big to upload to this blog:(

Ty came out and sang two songs to end the show. As soon as we played the last note, my brain said “OK you are done, go to bed!” I guess my adrenaline rush from the show was over! I could barely drive home.
Not very smart to have chemo and then have a full day of performing!

All in all it was a great day, a great show. I manage to play through the whole show with a numb thumb, pain shooting down my arm and numb feet but I never once dropped my pick lol! That was a big worry for me. Trust me, when I played the solo with Vince I really squeezed the pick so I wouldn’t drop it!

June 8th CMA FEST 

This morning I had to be in Nashville by 10:30am to play a show with Ty downtown. Today, I played bass guitar for him which I enjoy and will be easier on my fingers because the strings are bigger. We played for about 25 minutes on the Forever Stage downtown.
When we finished I came home and plopped myself on the couch. CMA Fest is done for me. I had a great time playing music again and being a musician/artist for that last few days but I was wore out! Every inch of me hurt but it was worth it. See I still can’t travel for work so getting to play in town was great! Not sure when I will get to play again:(

June 9th RELAX

Today I came to my favorite place of peace…the lake! I relaxed and boated with friends today. So nice!!!!!!!!!!