It’s a letter written directly from the heart. The simple, touching words of a vulnerable husband and father wishing to do something special for his beloved, cancer-stricken wife. “I’m desperate to help my darling wife find herself,” Todd Hobson, 44, wrote to Woman’s Day from his home in rural Tasmania.

“What I’m asking for is help with a makeover. With our limited funds, I can’t just say to her, ‘Here, baby, spend some money to find out who you are now, buy some new clothes to make you feel like a woman again’. She’s a selfless, beautiful person and I’d be forever grateful if you could help her.” The emotion-charged message spoke volumes about the sort of man he is – one with an overwhelming love for his suffering wife, Samantha, and a doting father to the two-year-old girl the couple had been so desperate to conceive.

“We planned our future on our four-hectare property,” recalls Todd, an engineer who builds racing cars. “But as the weeks got closer to the arrival of our precious baby girl, Sam was diagnosed with breast cancer at 30 weeks. Five cancers in the one breast. “Our sweet daughter, Arwen, was born premature and, after only three days, Sam had to have both her breasts removed.

She couldn’t even hold our child – the heartbreak in her eyes was often unbearable. “So I became the primary carer, nurse, mother and father. But I had to return to work, leaving Sam at home to cope with the side effects of chemotherapy, the loss of her womanhood, and a newborn angel to look after. But not once did she complain.” Then, no sooner had Sam recovered from breast cancer, than she and Arwen were involved in a horrific car crash. But all she wanted was for Arwen to be rescued.

Read more about the Hobson family's incredible story, see all the before and after pictures of Sam's make-over and find out how Sam surprised Todd in this week's Woman's Day, on sale February 13, 2012.