Coronation Street legend Tracy Shaw has insisted she is “counting her blessings” amid chemotherapy even though the side effects are proving “incredibly painful”

Coronation Street star Tracy Shaw has insisted she is “counting her blessings” amid chemotherapy. The former Coronation Street star, 52, who played Maxine Peacock on the ITV soap from 1995 until 2003, announced earlier this year that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and has now begun gruelling rounds of chemo in a bid to beat the disease.

Speaking in a new video posted to Instagram, she said : “[The sunlight] helps, doesn’t it? It gets so cold when you haven’t got hair and you go through your first lot of chemo. I’m really grateful for that today. I fell asleep at 8am, woke up at four, which is what happens.

“I’ve got out in the woods today with the dogs which is beautiful. I’m also going to share the side effects medication is helping me at this point because it’s really improved knowing on the second hard because it hit harder and quicker, so I was able to have medication immediately. I keep counting my blessings that it’s one round down again and this part isn’t nice, these few days.”

The actress, who also enjoyed a brief pop career with a cover of the Lonnie Gordon track Happenin’ All Over Again before going on to appear in Casualty, Doctors and a string of theatre productions over the years, is taking every precaution when she goes out and, because she lives alone, is grateful that her mum is coming to help out in the coming days.

She added: “The steroids are helping with my bone function and helping the body fight a bit quicker but they will be gone tomorrow and that’s when the body is left to its own devices to kick back which is where the infection comes up. I’ve been wearing plastic gloves and, if you remember the COVID days, masks at all time.

“But the gloves are helping me, touching so much, with the dogs and their balls. I live alone so luckily I’ve got some help coming down, my mum’s coming to visit. She’ll be staying somewhere else, and coming in to help if I need to go to A&E.”

Tracy then explained that she is trying to come up with a word to describe her cancer and admitted that even though the side effects are “extremely painful,” she is aware that the chemotherapy is doing what it needs to as she continues to battle the disease.

“I’ve just been talking to someone who said she called [her cancer] another name. A word I think gives it power, so I quite like The Nothing or The No Name.

“Because I don’t think it should be empowered by being acknowledged . What the chemo today s doing is amazing, it’s killing everything in me.

“It’s helping me survive, so the side effects seem minimal even though they’re incredibly painful, it’s doing the thing against It. What do you think would offend it the most?”

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