GAIL Hepworth was today celebrating staying alive one year after being diagnosed as suffering from advanced bone cancer.

And she thanked supportive friends, relatives, colleagues, nursing staff and Evening Press readers for enabling her to reach a milestone which once seemed impossible.

Gail, 40, from Hemingbrough, near Selby, underwent a scan at York District Hospital on July 6 last year after suffering great pain in her bones. It revealed that breast cancer suffered four years earlier had spread extensively to much of her skeleton, and she was put on 1,200 milligrams of morphine a day to control her extreme pain.

Gail was determined to do whatever it took to enjoy a better quality of life and see her two children grow up, and an appeal was launched by family and friends to send her to the Schachter clinic in New York for complementary treatment. Evening Press readers helped raise £13,000 in 17 days.

After the trip, her pain was brought under control to the extent that she could stop taking any morphine, and today she is still off the powerful painkiller and is able to enjoy life, with some days better than others.

"The cancer is still there," she said. "Cancer and I climbed Castle Crag in the Lake District on Sunday! I walked for four miles and was quite proud of myself."

She is continuing to take large and expensive amounts of complementary medicine which, along with further telephone consultations with the Schachter Centre, each costing £100, are draining the remaining money left from last year's fund-raising efforts.

She has been troubled by continuous liver problems, and is now, following advice from the Schachter Centre, set to take three new complementary treatments to help protect the liver from cancer spread and regenerate the liver tissue.

They are extracts of milk thistle, European mistletoe and alpha lipoic acid, which all have anti-oxidant properties capable of tackling cancer.

One year on from the diagnosis, Gail said: "I want to say thank you to friends, colleagues at York District Hospital (where Gail used to work), and nursing staff, for all their love and affection and support. It is that which has helped me get through to where I am today."