Mel O'Neill is a mum-of-two from Penketh who has been living with cancer for 13 years. She writes a regular blog for the Warrington Guardian

Last week I was told the cancer that I’ve been living with for 13 years is still there, raising its ugly head and reminding me that it’s on the prowl again.

I refuse to battle with it. I don’t see it as a fight so I want to understand it and its presence. Dealing with the rollercoaster of emotions for many years, my relationship with cancer has now changed.

After so many years of living in fear of my death and not being able to see my daughters grow up, I no longer have the same fear.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to die but I’m done with living in a fearful bubble when year after year I’m still alive.

However that said, I now feel like a have a blanket over my shoulders, that there’s something trying hard to weigh me down. Is it trying to tell me something or teach me something? So after I start on treatment in order to prolong my life, I’m hoping it will give me enough time to discover what it is.

What is cancer telling me this time I wonder?

Over 13 years ago I was diagnosed with a very rare and aggressive form of breast cancer called inflammatory breast cancer. I began conventional medicine but along the way money was raised in order for me to be able to discover different alternative approaches. Unfortunately none of these regimes worked for me but conventional medicine and my amazing oncologist kept me alive long enough to really believe I was my own cure.

I started to love and respect myself and after I took on the role as a Tropic Ambassador my life took a massive turn. I started to really love what I was doing and the more I loved it the more good things started to happen and I began to thrive.

I created a makeup group on social media where I’ve gained almost 5,000 followers, my appointment book began to bulge and my love of life just continued to grow as I never felt as though I was working, not even for a minute. I had no goal or agenda and my life just kept getting better and better. And as I began to approach life differently all my relationships with others just blossomed including my love for my daughters, my hubby, family and friends.

Mel O'Neill

I was flying high with such gratitude, comparing where I’d been to mentally to where I am now so you can imagine I was completely and utterly floored when I was recently told it had returned in my lymph nodes in my chest.

Every day I feel a little different. One minute I’m sad and transported back in time to a place of fear, pain, tiredness and feeling utterly rubbish, consumed with hospital appointments that tried hard to control my life when everything had to be planned around them, and I don’t want to go back there. I cry thinking about it, but I have no choice. Then I feel strong and brave as I refuse to be a victim believing my oncologist when he tells me I’ll be in remission within three months.

Then the tears start to fall again as I understand that this time I’ll have to remain on treatment inevitably, so as hair loss is one of the main side effects, I’ll be permanently bald. Not a look I want at 50.

And then I feel lucky to have made it to 50, to experience such happiness, to experience such a love of life, for the way I’ve learnt to appreciate and love my girls and my husband more than ever before and the way I have chosen to bring my daughters up teaching them that they will always be enough and to know their own worth.

These are some of things I feared I would never get the chance to do but I’m also thankful to cancer for the lessons I’ve learned in doing so, making me see myself and life from a different perspective, something I would never have done if it wasn’t for cancer. It’s just a shame it took cancer to have to teach me this as I clearly wasn’t listening before.

So for now I’ll wait for my appointments to come through, I’ll plan my week accordingly and I’ll just take every day as it comes.

I believe the universe has a plan for all of us but none of us know what that is or how long we’ll be here for so I intend to make the most of my life.

I’ll continue to thrive and love the life I’ve created and along the way I’ll vlog and blog in order to help others as I did before as there’s plenty of people worse off than me and I want to give them hope relating to how I’m getting through it.

In the meantime, I’ll never stop learning life’s lessons and appreciating everything I have after I learn how to shake off this blanket I have weighing me down, fold it neatly and pop it away in a box forever.