Yolanda Hadid is "happy to be alive" after her battle with Lyme disease.

Yolanda Hadid

Yolanda Hadid

The 'Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' star has been through a lot as she battles the neurological condition - which is a bacterial infection spread to humans by infected ticks - but is "happy" and feeling positive about the future.

She said: "I am great. I'm happy to be here and happy to be alive."

And Yolanda has described the struggle of dealing with an invisible illness.

Speaking to the New York Post's Page Six column, she added: "You look normal yet you're dying on the inside. That's hard for people to understand."

Meanwhile, the 53-year-old television personality previously admitted she "wanted to die" when she was diagnosed with Lyme disease and is desperate to find a cure for the sake of her children, Bella and Anwar, who both suffer from it.

She said: "I just was hopeless and didn't see how I was going to get out of the dark hole. I wanted to die, but the next second, I looked at a picture of my sweet kids. They are my reason for fighting ... My greatest gift would be if I can find the cure before I leave this planet, so they can live a life they deserve."

And Yolanda - who also has daughter Gigi - admits the first step to her recovery was "surrendering" to the disease.

She shared: "You know, you just have to surrender. I just had to surrender, like the first year, I fought it every day and I would be miserable about being miserable. At some point you just learn to surrender to your path. This obviously was my path for five years and the healing clock is, you know, the universe's time and not on my time. So it was a big lesson in learning to be patient and learning to be disciplined. I just found this inner strength that I never knew I had and the will to live and that stuck me through it."