My saviour during the past 10 years living with cancer

OUR blogger Melanie O'(*10*), from Penketh, has two youngsters and was recognized with inflammatory breast cancer 10 years in the past.

Here she shares her newest ideas on living with cancer.

It’s now June and I haven’t wanted chemotherapy for over six months.

In between spells of tiredness you will see that me making quick video clips primarily about make-up, giving recommendation on methods to make the most of what we have already got or create the phantasm that solely make-up can, whether or not or not it’s glowing pores and skin or flushed cheeks or outlined eyes.

Makeup is a saviour to these with no confidence to go with out it. It can elevate your spirits once you’re feeling low, make you seem properly once you’re feeling like crap. It can conceal or it might intensify options you simply should know methods to and have the proper instruments to do it.

Over the past ten years I’ve misplaced my hair twice alongside with my eyelashes and eyebrows and I used to be lucky sufficient to have the data in make-up software to create eyebrows & lashes that weren’t even there.

Remembering these hairless days once I thought I resembled Lord Voldermort from the Harry Potter movies and affected by the unintended effects of the chemo, I might apply make-up to assist me seem properly and look extra human.

I now need to give different girls particularly cancer sufferers, the data that helped me get by the worst days once I may barely get off the sofa. In reality I need to educate anybody prepared to be taught, a easy but efficient option to look extra lovely and but nonetheless really feel like themselves however extra assured.

Don’t get me fallacious I like my make-up free days once I’m not going wherever due to this fact permitting my pores and skin to breathe thus making an enormous distinction once I do determine to put on make-up.

They’re my lazy days and all of us want them occasionally though the “100 miles an hour Mel” appears to be creeping slowly again however I’m extra conscious of it now so I decelerate and cease as and once I have to, which I by no means did earlier than.

I nonetheless have days once I get up already exhausted earlier than the day has begun, realizing my physique is telling me to decelerate so I cease and hear having a make-up free day on the sofa with Netflix.

Those days have gotten extra and rarer as I plough by my hand written lists of jobs I write of issues I have to get by every day however realizing my well being is extra essential I realise once I have to cease.

My coronary heart goes out to those that are affected by ME or unintended effects of remedy together with chemotherapy leaving you with debilitating exhaustion and fatigue.

We should handle what life has given us and get by it the greatest we are able to and the longer we’ve these unkind incapacities the extra we be taught, the extra data we achieve and the higher we all know our our bodies and methods to stay our lives higher than we did earlier than, making changes the place wanted.

I don’t find out about you however I don’t ever need to be seen as a sufferer rising above the challenges I’ve been given, dealing with each twist and switch head on with my glass half full not half empty, hoping I’m an instance for others dealing with comparable challenges.

My good friend Gill just lately commented on one in every of my posts on social media declaring “Mel you’re smashing life” after I posted an excited video of me gushing after to being requested to affix in on one in every of Laundry b’s (an internet clothes firm) every day stay classes on Facebook.

Life is most positively what you make it. If you adore it, do it and in case you don’t then wait patiently till one thing you like comes alongside but when it doesn’t, go on the market and seize it your self.

A make-up lesson with Melanie is a donation of £30 and £10 for anybody with cancer. All proceeds will go in the direction of her month-to-month remedy fund.