AT FIRST I don’t recognise her. Why would I? She was as bald as an egg last time we met. And her body was flooded with medicine so strong that walking across a room wore her out.

But look at her now – immaculately dressed and sporting a brunette, Posh-style bob.

She was diagnosed with cancer in November 2005.

“I had anaemia, and felt tired,” she said at the time. After the birth of her son she found herself going ‘hot and cold and shaking a lot’.

“But I just put that down to being a new Mum and tiredness down to the sleepless nights.”

Then, after suffering a persistent infection, she went to hospital. “They took one look and said ‘We think you need blood’. When the sample came back they told me the normal haemoglobin level should be around 160. Mine was 53.”

There followed an excruciating process in which Natasha was forced to stop breastfeeding baby Alfie at just three weeks, before receiving the first chemotherapy.

“I really sobbed during that last feed,” she remembers. “There was so much I couldn’t do, I couldn’t change his nappy because of germs. I had to see people dressing him and caring for him and I wanted to do that.”

Now Alfie is five and at school – something Natasha wondered if she would ever see.

“When I became ill I never imagined in the November that I would even see Christmas. I certainly didn’t think I’d see him go to school.”

She missed ‘doing the school run’ and making eldest son Joshua’s sandwiches.

She was able to help him with his homework when her husband Paul, from whom she has since sadly parted, brought him into hospital and there were always sleepovers on Fridays.

The care she received on the Durlston Ward at Poole inspired Natasha to start her own charity, LEAF – Leukaemia Educating and Fundraising, which she launched from her hospital bed.

“LEAF was my way of repaying what they gave me,” she says. “I’d felt so isolated on the ward and I thought that if someone who’d survived had come to see me, it I would have given me such hope. I always felt I should give something back.”

And she has. So far, Leaf has raised £85,000. “I run it on a voluntary basis, it’s a full-time job but I now have another assistant, Sara Haymes, to help me.”

They have given books, equipment and Christmas gifts for patients on Durlston.

“Awareness is key for us, I want to be as well-known as Julia’s House,” says Natasha.

Five years on from her ordeal, she can even speak about the ‘fond memories’ she has of some of it, such as the day she took off her blonde wig in response to the cat-calling from builders, while she was driving the convertible car Paul bought her as a leaving hospital present.

She even has good memories of the hospital itself. “The consultant told me that when some people finish treatment they actually drive a different route to avoid seeing the hospital because it holds bad memories.

“But I love it there. I still see it as the warm, safe place that gave me back my life.”

She especially loved her nurses. “I used to think they had invisible wings, they were like angels to me. Even on their days off they used to come in to visit.”

Even more amazing was that Natasha went on to have baby Herbie, who is now two. He is unaffected by the leukaemia but Natasha believes her illness affected her other children in different ways.

“Joshua still gets anxious if I have to go to the doctor and it took me ages to bond with Alfie.”

She feels sympathy for those who don’t have such strong support in their illness. “I had so much to fight for; I had two children, a husband and a mum.”

Did she suffer the cancer mum’s nightmare; visions of a coffin with her family crying behind it?

“Oh yes, I used to imagine it being lowered into the ground. Every day I’d ask the nurses if I would die.

“They’d smile and say; ‘No, we don’t give you permission to die today.’ Someone told me it would help to plan my funeral but that really was the wrong advice.”

Her idea of dying is now this: “We’ll all end up in the same place so that’s why it’s important to do something on the journey.”

Then she says something astonishing. “Before I got leukaemia I used to think I hated my life. I had no energy or momentum, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

“I look back now and wonder how I could have felt like that but this illness has been about me finding my happiness, strength and confidence.”