The singer said there were days she felt so terrible she was unable to leave her bed.

But she had words of comfort for other women battling the disease.

"I love to say: you can get through it. You can," she said.

The 38-year-old Australian star opened her heart in an emotional interview with Cat Deeley, to be broadcast this Sunday on Sky One.

Describing her treatment, she said: "I don't want to go into the doom and gloom of it. It's hard.

"The days you didn't see me or no-one saw me were the days that I simply couldn't get up or could not do anything. To walk to the corner store was a great... But I did it. I got to the cafe. And then went home."

Minogue said she had just a day between her diagnosis and an operation on her breast.

"I had one day's grace where I knew and went for a walk down to the beach with my brother and my boyfriend and I would have been in a total daze," she said.

"The next day we made an announcement and then I was virtually a prisoner in the house which, not that I intended to go anywhere, but from then on I was just completely thrown into another world."

Asked at what moment the news she had cancer sunk in, she replied: "It's still sinking in."

"It's a very steep learning curve," she said.

Throughout her ordeal, Minogue was most worried about the effect her diagnosis was having on her parents.