Dale’s Leah: I’m scared of dying STAR’S HEARTBREAKING CANCER BATTLE
TERMINALLY-ILL actress Leah Bracknell has revealed her fear of dying – and says it is now “too painful to look forward”.
Ex-Emmerdale star Leah adds she feels “hopelessness and despair” over her cancer, plus devastation she will no longer be there for her two daughters.
Leah, 54, married author boyfriend Jez Hughes, 44, last March after discovering treatment to prolong her life had stopped working.
She was diagnosed with incurable stage four lung cancer in September 2016.
Posts on her cancer journey blog had been overwhelmingly upbeat – so her latest update will break her readers’ hearts.
“It’s hard to keep on keepin’ on,” she writes. “It’s hard not to see the glass half-empty when you have been issued a sell-by date and options are running out.”
She describes an “unwelcome bedfellow who whispers unsweet nothings of nothing into my ear, fuelling the terrors and painting the world black, willing me to break, seducing me down the path of hopelessness and despair”.
She adds: “I chose surrender – to surrender to the uncomfortable emotions, to honour my vulnerability, to let the cracks show and the tears flow. There is no shame in admitting that sometimes putting on a brave face just doesn’t cut it.”
Leah told last month how four GPs and X-rays failed to spot fluid building around her heart before her cancer diagnosis.
It meant she nearly died after her abdomen swelled so much she found it hard to breathe.
She was rushed to hospital and had emergency l i fe- saving surgery to remove the fluid.
She is now thought to be having chemotherapy to make her eligible for an immunotherapy drug recently approved in the UK.
In a post called “Death and the Elephant”, Leah reveals that although she is not scared of death, she is afraid of dying.
“The universal hope for all of us is that it is quick, painless and preferably in our sleep,” she says.
“But I suspect that the road will be a little less predictable.”
Describing the prospect of saying goodbye to her loved ones, she writes: “The imagined pain of that final separation is intolerable. “I am only grateful my children are adults, they have weathered storms of childhood and adolescence and are beginning to carve lives independent of parental influence.” She shares her sadness she “may not be around to witness milestones or be a shoulder for the challenges life brings”. But Leah still hopes that her legacy will be positive for her daughters. “If I can have courage in the darkness,” she writes, “if I can face the challenges I will meet, if I can enjoy my life, have adventures, turn tragedy into opportunity, show them that no matter what, it is possible to rise... then I am still doing my job, from that little place in their hearts where time and space are eternal.” She adds: “My spirit is intact. Bruised, battered and in need of TLC from time to time. “But please, ease, please, cancer is a physical malady, do o not give it permission n to infect the beauty ty of your spirit. Let cancer become your reason to be everything hing you hoped you might be. “There is everything to gain ain from discovering ng who you are and nd what you are made of, celebrating ng life with every fibre of your being.” .”