Leah Bracknell wakes up "excited" every day because she is "really glad" to be alive.
Leah Bracknell
The former 'Emmerdale' actress - who played Zoe Tate in the soap from 1989 to 2005 - is suffering from terminal lung cancer and nearly died before she was diagnosed after being rushed to hospital in September 2016 with a swollen abdomen, but she refuses to be downbeat about the disease.
She said: "I wake up every day excited. I didn't do that before the cancer.
"I'm just really glad to be here. I wasn't expected to live that long, so I am just going to carry on, gloriously living, no matter what the doctors are saying.
"I could have died but I was still alive - that was a gift. I had to time to tell my family how much I love them and decide how I wanted to live."
The 53-year-old actress isn't planning to go over the top with her Christmas decorations because she doesn't want it to look as though it will be her "last Christmas", but insists her last-minute festive planning is not unusual.
She said: "We haven't arranged anything, it will all be very last minute. So, in other words, it will be exactly the same as it always is.
"I could think, 'We are going to have the biggest Christmas tree, people will be able to see it in Cornwall, and we'll have reindeer on the roof'.
"But that would be like saying, this might be my last Christmas, get through it and I'll have done that. I don't think like that."
However, the one-time vegetarian - who had to start eating meat again and cut out sugar following her cancer diagnosis - is not in panto this year because she hasn't had any work offers since being diagnosed with the disease.
She said: "No one is employing me since I was diagnosed, the phone hasn't been ringing.
"Devastating doesn't convey how shattering that diagnosis is."
Leah - who has also appeared in 'Judge John Deed' and 'Doctors' - was left "shocked" after the public raised nearly £65,000 for her to have private treatment.
She added to the Daily Mirror newspaper: "I am the most private person, so it was a real shock. All of a sudden, my whole life was thrown into the public arena. That was awful, but the response from the public was overwhelming."
In February, Leah admitted she planned to look on the bright side rather than dwell on the "negative stuff".
She said: "I'm going to choose to embrace life and going to choose to make positive decisions. I haven't got the energy to react to negative stuff."