Dannii's heartbreak of losing a friend to cancer

Melbourne (ANI): Aussie singer and television personality Dannii Minogue has revealed in her diaries the heartbreak of losing a friend to cancer and how it helped her build her own life. Minogue found that Australia's Got Talent was what rescued her from falling apart totally, and giving back her confidence. The 36-year-old 'Home and Away' star was still not very clear what she wanted to do with her career and life and it was only after her recent participation in Olivia Newton-John's Great Wall of China charity walk that it became clear to her.

Besides finding herself again, Minogue says working on Australia's Got Talent has played a key role in rescuing her from a downward emotional spiral. "It (the show) was the hand that grabbed me to save me," Daily Telegraph quoted Minogue as saying.

"I remember when my sister (Kylie) was sick (with breast cancer), we'd sit watching comedies to keep our spirits up. It's been shown how important laughter is in a situation like that, when someone is having treatment. "After that I thought, 'I may not have an all-important job in science, but I can do some good by doing something fun and happy something that offers a moment to escape and have a good time'. This show Australia's Got Talent is a happy pill. I came in to do this after two of the darkest years of my life. My sister was ill and my best friend was dying of cancer and I needed this show to get me back on track," she said.

One of the most touching incidents in her life has been the way her friend, who passed away from cancer, took charge of her own life even on her deathbed. On her walk on the Great Wall of China, she was able to consider so many things about her life, especially her friends who have lost their lives to the disease or who are still suffering from it. How each of them affected her. Minogue then offered to read a few words from the dairy, which she had written along her China walk.

"On returning to the hotel I am moved by what I have seen and tears of sorrow stream down my face, for the ones I have lost to cancer," Minogue wrote. "Three friends - one was my best friend. We were sitting around chatting one day when she noticed she had a pain like a kidney infection. The following day she was taken to hospital. I sat by her side for three months watching the devastation of cancer take over. "We went through the horrific diagnosis that she was not going to survive. Thirty-six years old, my friend was never to leave that hospital. In the most serene, organised way, she planned her funeral and gave family and friends specific details to take care of. All I could do was rub her feet and look into her eyes and try to be brave. Six months after her passing I find myself with all her loved ones on a beach to scatter her ashes into the sea, as requested."

"There is nothing that can take your breath away more than holding ashes of your dear young lost friend in your hand, and uncurling finger by finger until they float away in the tide. I was numb all over. This was just over a year ago and I am now here, in central China, crying and trying to accept this personal devastation. Most of the walkers on this trip have no idea what I had been through, and suspect I am walking since my experience of my sister's breast cancer. I wish that was the only reason. With one friend surviving leukaemia, four surviving cancer, three friends lost to cancer and two currently being treated for cancer, the numbers are staggering."

"Please, please, please help me raise money to find a cure for this illness that is plaguing our lives. I don't want to live with it, and I don't want to fight it. Just find a cure and move forward to a time when it will no longer be a part of our world," she wrote in her dairy. The one person that Dannii Minogue trusts is Australia's Got Talent creator Simon Cowell who she has opened her heart to, with Cowell in turn taking her under his wings.