HEARTFELT gratitude has gone out in the most uplifting way to all the people who helped one woman win her battle against cancer.
To the upbeat soundtrack of Andrew Gold's Thank You For Being A Friend, Catherine Beck has made a YouTube video singing her army of supporters' praises.
The 32-year-old from Pittville was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia in May last year.
Refusing to let this dampen her spirit, she smiled her way through four rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy before receiving a vital stem cell transplant in September from an anonymous German donor.
Now Catherine has paid tribute in her video to "all my friends, family, nurses and the Linc (cancer charity) staff" with the simple message "thank you for getting me through it".
"Because I was in isolation for so long I couldn't really talk to people so my main way of keeping them updated was through Twitter and Facebook," she said.
"But so many people did things for me, I wanted to make a more public video. A lot of people have to go through this on their own, which I couldn't imagine, so this was to say 'thank you for not forgetting me'".
The video thanks people for giving her flowers, alcohol and an "entire chocolate factory", as well as praising fundraisers and those who helped her "come to terms" with her diagnosis.
"You hope your family and closest friends will be there for you, but my faith has been restored in humanity and the kindness of strangers," she said.
"My friend's mum, who I'd only met once, used to send me postcards and cards and now she's a really important part of my life.
"Over the last year the attention's been on me all the time and it was nice to flip that attention back on others with my video."
Catherine, who was supported by her partner Ben Spurway, is now in remission and returns to work in event management at Ucas, Cheltenham, next week.
