Strictly Come Dancing star Amy Dowden has revealed she will have fertility treatment before she begins taking drugs to fight her breast cancer, and will be forced to put her plans for children on hold.
The 32-year-old professional dancer, who joined the BBC show in 2017, has spoken movingly to the Mirror following a single mastectomy last week after being diagnosed with grade 3 aggressive breast cancer just one month ago.
The Welsh star had her right breast removed, and two tumours, three cancer “specks” and lymph nodes were sent for analysis.
As she awaits doctors’ findings which will decide whether she needs radiotherapy alone, or chemotherapy too, she reveals she must meet with a fertility expert this week to arrange treatment before she can begin the next phase of her cancer battle.
Cancer drugs will impact her fertility, damaging her chances of conception naturally.
Amy is movingly open about wanting children. She and her husband Ben Jones, her professional dance partner, with whom she runs a dance school in the West Midlands, married last July.
They had already begun discussing starting a family.
“It will be another thing to put on hold,” she says, adding she has “definitely” always wanted to be a mum.
“We run a dance school with lots of little girls and boys, I’m a dancing mum already,” she says.
“They have promised me,” she says of her discussions with doctors about the possibility of having children. “There are no guarantees but they will give it their best shot.”
She and Ben, who met in their early 20s and with whom she won the British National Latin Dance Championships, had planned to have their home extended before trying for a baby.
Builders were due this week but have now been postponed.
The next stage, when the house was ready and Amy’s career allowed, was planning to start a family.
But for now Amy, who discovered a lump in her breast just a day before their belated honeymoon in April, knows that will have to wait while she regains her health.
Speaking candidly about her surgery for the first time, she told the Mirror: “The cancer is in the lab now, which is the most important thing.
“The hardest time was waiting for surgery, thinking ‘I have cancer inside me’.
“You’re thinking ‘It’s grade three, what if it’s spreading, what if it spreads tonight?’
“The feeling of it made me feel disgusted, disgusting. That’s the time I was randomly crying, emotional.
“But we drove away and I thought, ‘It’s gone’.
“I’m a doer, I feel we have done something.”
Doctors were able to reconstruct her breast and insert a small implant as part of her three-hour surgery last Wednesday.
“I haven’t looked, I’m waiting for the bruising and swelling to go down,” she admits. “I don’t need to look yet, I don’t want to shock or upset myself.”
They weren’t initially sure they’d be able to reconstruct straight away.
She continues: “I wasn’t able to use my own tissue because they said there wasn’t enough. But they had been worried it might be too bruised and they would need to put an expander in.
“Normally you have breast tissue, fat and skin but they said I had no fat. They did say it was tougher than they expected, but they could put a little implant in.”
Because Amy also lives with Crohn’s Disease, an inflammatory bowel condition first experienced when she was 11, and flare-ups can even result in hospital treatment, she was afraid of feeling severely ill, especially because of the general anaesthetic.
“I was really nervous before and I was in a lot of pain when I came round, and sick, and freezing,” she admits. “But since having my drains taken out I have coped well. Every day has got better in terms of soreness.
“I think how quickly I have felt myself again has made me feel more positive.”
Yet all the positivity in the world cannot disguise the blows Amy is having to absorb.
Beneath the careful make-up she wears, the first time she has managed to apply it in days - with help from a friend - shadows of anxiety cross her face.
When she receives her report, revealing the stage of her cancer, and if it has spread, doctors will decide if she needs radiotherapy only, or chemotherapy too. There is a 50/50 chance of this.
Her Crohn’s is exacerbated by stress and a flare-up could make the latter difficult, even stop it.
There are other hurdles, too.
Because her mum also faced breast cancer, albeit older, aged 51, Amy has been tested for the BRCA gene. If that is positive, designating her at higher risk, she will face a second mastectomy. Her twin sister and brother are also having the test.
She admits until last year she had not been checking her breasts regularly.
A trek with the breast cancer charity Coppafeel!, organised by Giovanna Fletcher, the wife of McFly’s Tom, Amy’s 2021 Strictly partner, prompted her to begin. The couple has been in touch every day since her diagnosis.
She credits the charity with saving her life. Doctors have said discovery just three months later could have resulted in a “very different story”. She reveals the tumour she found was so virulent it “doubled in size” between her two scans after diagnosis.
Her attitude from the start has been to raise awareness, to stop this happening to anyone else.
She casually drops in how she encouraged her friends to feel the lump in her breast.
“I want to get people to check, and I wanted them to be aware of what they’re looking for,” she explains.
I say I’ve never heard of anyone doing that before. She shrugs.
“I’ve had so many messages from women who have started checking,” she explains.
“Even if ten people start checking I’ll have done my job.”
