Actress Leah Bracknell, who played Zoe Tate in Emmerdale for 16 years, has given fans an emotional update on her cancer battle.
The soap star, 53, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer nearly two years ago, but has always insisted she would fight the illness every step of the way.
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On her blog Something Beginning With C, the actress and yoga teacher praised the NHS and ended with the lyrics to the song: “I will survive.”
Leah describes having fluid removed from her lung and writes: “Forty minutes and three coughs later and I am done.
“The cause of this, my latest incapacitation, the breathlessness, the palpitations, the discomfort, pain and physical restriction when life is reduced to a corner of the sofa and dependency on others, lies malignantly in a plastic bag upon a metal trolley, not yet for discarding, but for analysis, searching for more clues in the crime of my disease.”
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Despite being in pain, which left her with a “sea of sickness”, Leah used the post to praise the NHS doctor treating her.
She says: “Beside me, Dr H. wraps things up with a manner at once professional, friendly and endlessly reassuring. We have met several times over the last year, despite my best intentions not to […] and normalises this most un-normal of circumstances.
“As bedside manners go, he rates a 10/10.”
Despite this, she hopes she “doesn’t meet him again for a very long time”.
Leah first revealed news of her devastating diagnosis in October 2016, and later launched a GoFundMe page in the hope of raising £50,000 for pioneering treatment.
During an appearance on Loose Women last year, Leah explained how the diagnosis has had a positive effect on her.
She told the presenters: “I feel positive about life. You get told that they can’t do anything to help you and I’m thinking, ‘What do I do now?’
“I can’t change the diagnosis, but I can choose how I respond. Initially you are in complete meltdown. I didn’t tell anyone for two or three days while I tried to think of a way to tell them positively.”
She continued: “I am going to choose to make positive decisions, I am going to choose to embrace life and I’m going to choose to be thankful that I have life, because I might not have done.”
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