Jan. 25th.<\/p>\n
Today is January 25th. \u00a0I haven’t written lately because I wasn’t sure how I would continue this blog to be honest. \u00a0After days of being pretty emotional and sad I’ve decided that I would just have to write how I honestly feel.<\/p>\n
I went to see my surgeon on January 18th to discuss surgery options. He did an ultra sound of my tumor and the two lymph nodes that had tested cancer positive months ago before chemo started. As I lay there hoping for him to have good news, he spoke the wonderful words, \u201cWell the chemo did its job and has shrunk the tumor to almost nothing! I don\u2019t really see the tumor and it seems I can only see the marker we placed by that original tumor. The lymph nodes seem to look good as well\u201d. I lay there with tears rolling down my face. I wanted to scream with happiness! I looked over to my friend who was with me (who has been at every doctor appointment with me) and she was crying too. This is the news that every cancer patient wants to hear from their doctor. I lay there thanking God for this news. Thanking God for the doctors and yes thanking God for the chemo though I thought that it would kill me at times.<\/p>\n
The surgeon proceeded to tell me how happy he was with the results and that my prognosis for being cancer free is now at 90%. I was very happy but I will say it felt weird in my gut to hear the words\u202690% survival rate. You want to hear 100% but that isn\u2019t an option with breast cancer. I guess once you have cancer you lose the 100% rating.
\nThe doctor started talking about my surgery options but to be honest I couldn\u2019t really pay attention to everything he said because I was still thinking about the tumor shrinking so much. I wanted to call everyone I knew.\u00a0Thank God my friend was there and I had notes written down to ask.<\/p>\n
My options are a lumpectomy with 35 radiation treatments for 35 days in a row or a mastectomy. If I choose the mastectomy and he doesn\u2019t see any cancer in my lymph nodes at the time of surgery I could forego all radiation. My thought is I have put my body through hell and back, I\u2019d rather not have more toxicity through radiation if it can be avoided. My surgeon says the lumpectomy would do the same job as a mastectomy, that neither one of them was better than the other as far as keeping the cancer from coming back. It\u2019s a lot to think about and a big decision to make.
\nFor either surgery I would be in the surgery\/healing process 4-6 weeks so they both will take about the same time for each procedure.
\nThe doctor told me to take a few days to decide and let him know so we could get the ball rolling on which surgery to do.<\/p>\n
As we were leaving my heart was full of different emotions. I was feeling extremely blessed over my great news but extremely sad over something else.
\nI found out earlier in the week that another friend of mine had cancer and her prognosis was not good. Though I wanted to rejoice for myself I started to cry for her. I couldn\u2019t understand how chemo could help one cancer but couldn\u2019t help another kind. Why was I lucky and my friend wasn\u2019t? I know that no cancer is the same and everyones bodies react differently but the thought that she might not survive and I will was hard to accept. I now understand \u201csurvivors guilt\u201d. I guess that\u2019s what this is\u2026it\u2019s just hard to understand. My friend I\u2019m referring to is country singer Lari White Cannon. Lari had been diagnosed with rare peritoneal cancer about the same time that I found out I had cancer. Lari\u2019s career took off a couple years just before mine did. We played a lot of the same shows and we were enjoying the success of our careers around the same time. Lari was one of the first artists I met when I moved to Nashville. \u2028Lari and I had been texting that week about our cancers. She told me that she was very sick and that the first chemo protocol didn\u2019t work and that she was about to start a second wave the next week but her prognosis was not good. She continued to type, \u201cI will be praying for your complete healing, xox\u201d. That was the last text she sent me. As sick as she was, she found it in her to want to pray for my healing but that was Lari. Always so kind.<\/p>\n
So as you can see, it was hard to really rejoice in my news knowing where Lari was with hers. She lost her battle on Tuesday, Jan 23rd just 12 days after her last text to me. I have been very sad and have had such mixed emotions all week so I decided to wait to blog about my news. Again that feeling of guilt fills me with how can I be so lucky? Why couldn\u2019t it work for Lari? She has a family who needs her\u2026 I can pray to find answers that might not ever come, and ultimately only God knows why.
\nLari prayed for me to have complete healing. That\u2019s what she wanted for me so I need to rejoice in that. I do feel that Lari would want me to. So I will celebrate the good news I was told by my doctor and I will continue my fight just as Lari would have wanted me to and I will also continue my blog in hopes that I might help someone with their cancer. I will carry Lari with me through my fight and fight harder and pray the someday all cancers can be cured.<\/p>\n
God speed to Lari, RIP my friend. You are singing with the angels in the best choir ever. Please check out all of Lari\u2019s music. She had such a gift! And although she launched her career in country music , she had the ability to transcend genres, going from Country, R&B, Jazz, Rock with little effort. In fact my favorite album of hers was her Jazz infused album called \u201cGreen Eyed Soul\u201d. If you haven\u2019t heard that album add it to your collection, you won\u2019t be disappointed. The great thing about an artist, their music lives on. She will never be gone and we can take some comfort in the gifts she left us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jan. 25th. Today is January 25th. \u00a0I haven’t written lately because I wasn’t sure how I would continue this blog to be honest. \u00a0After days of being pretty emotional and sad I’ve decided that I would just have to write how I honestly feel. I went to see my surgeon on January 18th to discuss […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anitacochranmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}