Shortly after this photo, Natasha’s life was turned on its head

Natasha Strapps was young and in love when she received devastating news.
The Adelaide woman was 22 weeks pregnant with her first child and her partner Josh had just proposed.
“To me, I felt like I only had two to four weeks of being happy,” Strapps, 26, tells 9honey.
Shortly after Josh proposed and Strapps happily accepted, she felt short of breath.
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“I had what we thought was a virus or a chest infection,” she recalls.
“I had this terrible cough and just had no energy whatsoever.”
Multiple courses of antibiotics failed to alleviate her symptoms.
After two weeks in bed and a month of feeling unwell, Strapps tried to return to work but couldn’t manage it.
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She rang Josh crying and he told her to go to the hospital.
“I’m like, ‘That’s a bit excessive’.”
She was seen quickly due to her pregnancy and was initially told she had “atypical pneumonia.”
“I started on IV antibiotics for three or four days, and I told them that it wasn’t doing anything,” she says.
“They said that I was just presenting fine. Because I’m quite a bubbly person even when I’m not at my best, you wouldn’t know I’m not at my best, I guess.”
A lung specialist was called in to see Strapps and he was immediately concerned, sending her for a CT scan.
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“They found a large mass in my chest,” she says.
Further testing would confirm Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Strapps was in the maternity ward when she was told of her diagnosis, and her immediate concern was for her unborn child.
“The night that I found out it was cancer, hearing the other babies cry, I just held onto my belly and cried because I was like, ‘Is this the end?'”
Josh told her she had to come first but they were both relieved when they were told they would be able to treat her during her pregnancy.
Strapps was diagnosed on May 31 and began chemotherapy on June 5.
“There was a sense of urgency that I needed to start treatment because the mass was quite large,” she says.
“It was over 15 centimetres in my chest, which is fairly excessive, and close to my heart.”
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After seven sessions of chemotherapy during pregnancy, Strapps and Josh welcomed their daughter via emergency caesarean and a week later she was back to treatment.
“I had to finish my cycle, I think it was 12 chemotherapy treatments all up as part of that regime,” she says.
Strapps did her best to juggle her treatment and new motherhood. Daughter Mia, now 11 months old, was a “great sleeper”, which helped.
“I had a stem cell transplant in June and had my final scan to see where we’re at,” she explains.
Following the scan, she was told she is “now officially in remission”,although she remains cautious.
“It’s still not guaranteed. You can still relapse after.”
September is Blood Cancer Awareness Month. Find out more at the Leukaemia Foundation Australia website.
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