Elle Halliwell's sheer terror over battling leukemia while pregnant

When Elle Halliwell underwent a routine blood test in preparation for trying for a baby, the last thing she expected to come out of it was a cancer diagnosis.

Floored by the shock news that she's suffering from Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML) things got even worse for the Australian journalist, when just two days later, she found out she was pregnant.

"I picked [the pregnancy test] up, threw it across the room and swore," Elle revealed on last night's 60 Minutes. "That poor life inside me living in this sick body. I thought it had no hope."

Forced to chose between saving herself or her baby, the Sydney-born star needed to take action, and fast.

"I just instantly thought this will kill me," she said of her illness, which is treated using a drug called Interferon that can't be given to pregnant women.

"Knowing that it had invaded every kind of area your body, a blood cancer, I thought this is so fatal."

But rather than feel sorry for herself, the inspiring 30-year-old defied doctors' recommendations to terminate the pregnancy, and instead set about finding a way that she and her husband Nick could meet their unborn bub.

Having found out about her illness - which typically affects men in their 60s - at such an early stage, South Australian CML specialist Dr Tim Hughes advised the couple that they could hold off on treatment until the baby is born.

And despite the fact that waiting will increase her risk of the cancer becoming aggressive, for Elle, it was a no-brainer.

"I thought about dying and it didn't scare me as much as I thought it would," she said.

"I don't know why, I don't know why. I kind of thought I've lived a really great life and I'm bringing life into the world now and if all goes well, and if it doesn't I've done my best and it's not meant to be."

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