THREE years ago, Barbara Moss wrote her goodbye letters and prepared to die. Specialists had given her five months max – although they warned it could be less – to struggle against ‘terminal’ cancer and then that would be it. So in a quiet moment, Barbara sat down and put into words how much she loved everyone, how grateful she was for everything they had done, and please don’t be sad. She even planned her own funeral.

But those letters were never posted. They remain in a private drawer to this day. Which is a good job because Barbara Moss is still here. Not only that, check-ups over the last six months have shown her cancer has disappeared. While this may be cause for some subdued celebration, Barbara knows she is not out of the woods yet by a long chalk, but it has given her time to write a book about the extraordinary events that have overtaken her life, the first 52 years of which passed in relative anonymity.

Husband Mark is an engineering toolmaker, the couple have raised two strapping sons and Barbara had a career as a teacher, mainly of English at Blessed Edward Oldcorne RC Secondary and the Royal Grammar School, both in Worcester.

So far, so ordinary, but I bet you know the face and name of Barbara Moss now, because what happened in 2006 catapulted her on to the front page of this newspaper and into the media headlines.

After being diagnosed with inoperable cancer, which started in her bowel and spread to her liver, Barbara cashed in part of her pension and spent £21,000 on a drug unavailable on the NHS. When the treatment appeared to work, she became a key figure in a campaign to get Avastin included on NHS lists.

Suddenly, the lady from Aconbury Close, which ironically is just around the corner from Worcester’s St Richard’s Hospice and across the road from Worcestershire Royal Hospital (“We moved here in 1991, long before either was built,” she said) was a major news story.

Then in 2008, dark clouds loomed once more when it was found the cancer had returned and spread to her chest, neck and lymph nodes. Further sessions of chemotherapy were endured and against the odds, the cancer has retreated. In the ups and downs of Barbara Moss’s life, she is currently on an up.

Who’s Been Peeping In My Bed? (Aspect Design, £7.99) is the story of the rollercoaster events of the last three years that have taken their toll not only physically, but emotionally, on the Moss family. While psychologically the exercise may have been very beneficial, an unburdening in many ways, it has certainly not been done for financial gain. All the proceeds will be divided between two charities that mean a lot to her, Bowel Cancer UK and St Richard’s Hospice.

Barbara said: “When you are told you have cancer and they can’t operate, everything stops. You know whatever happens next your life will never be the same.”

From that shuddering halt, she has used the inspirational Martin Luther King quote to push her life on: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

“That just seems so apt,” she observed. “It has been a great comfort to me.”

It’s also printed right at the front of her book. A signpost to point the way forward.

Who’s Been Peeping In My Bed? – a strange title, but one Barbara feels has a fairytale quality – could easily be a railing against the shortcomings in the NHS, but it’s not that strident. Although the author does point out that drugs for ‘terminal’ illnesses are readily available in the other leading countries in Europe “and their survival rates are way beyond ours”.

The book is her account of living with a disease that not so long ago would indeed have been terminal. Thanks to new treatments and drugs, however they are funded, more and more people are surviving cancer and Barbara’s story should be both a comfort and an inspiration to many.

“I have tried to express in these few words how cancer opened my eyes to the things that matter,” she said. “My campaign for accessibility for new cancer drugs for everyone forms a substantial part of my story, but it does not take away the reality that must be faced. Instead it simply tries to make it part of a new way of life.”

One in which the postman, thankfully, has not been needed.

l Who’s Been Peeping In My bed? by Barbara Moss is available from the publishers Aspect Design by telephoning 01684 561567, on-line at aspect-design.net/books, through St Richard’s Hospice, Worcester, by quoting ISBN number 978-1-905796-35-2 at any bookshop or from the author on 07840 864606.