Strictly Come Dancing star Amy Dowden recently revealed that she had been diagnosed with grade three, aggressive breast cancer and just last week she underwent a single mastectomy.
Amy, 32, spoke exclusively to our sister newspaper The Mirror for her first interview since that frightening diagnosis, and admitted hesitantly “this is the first day I have felt like Amy”.
Amy told of the devastating blows she’s weathering and admits a close friend helped her get ready because the surgery has rendered her, for now, unable even to turn the handle in her shower.
The professional dancer returned home from hospital last Friday. Surgeons removed two tumours and three further cancer “specks”, plus some lymph nodes, from her right breast, which have now been sent for analysis.
She said: “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.”
Amy must now wait until next week for her histology report to tell her what stage her cancer is at, and if it has spread. Only then will she know what treatment is needed.
Just three weeks ago Amy told her online followers that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, after feeling a lump in her breast just a day before she flew on a belated honeymoon with her husband Ben Jones in April.
The couple, dance partners who run a dance school near their West Midlands’ home, only tied the knot last July.
Doctors were able to reconstruct her breast, inserting a small implant as part of her three-hour surgery last Wednesday.
She admitted: “I haven’t looked, I’m waiting for the bruising and swelling to go down, I don’t want to shock or upset myself.”
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.”
When Amy had her drains removed in hospital, Ben looked at the scarred area.
“He said it looked fine, normal. That’s Ben for you!” she smiles. “He wasn’t fazed.”
She laughs: “Before I went for surgery he said to my boob, ‘Nice knowing you’. That’s so Ben.”
Her fears before surgery weren’t around altered appearance.
Amy said: “On Strictly the costume and make-up teams can do amazing things."
The star also lives with Crohn’s Disease, an inflammatory bowel condition first experienced when she was 11, and flare-ups can result in hospital treatment. She was afraid of feeling severely ill from the 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.”
When she receives her report, doctors will decide if she needs radiotherapy only, or chemotherapy too. There is a 50/50 chance.
A Crohn’s flare-up could make the latter difficult.
Amy's mum also faced breast cancer, albeit older, aged 51, Amy has been tested for the BRCA gene. If that is positive, placing her at higher risk, she will face a second mastectomy.
But whatever her plan is, she must meet with a fertility expert next week to arrange urgent treatment before she begins. Her fertility would be impacted by cancer drugs.
Amy is movingly candid about wanting children. She and Ben, with whom she won the British National Latin Dance Championships, had already begun planning.
First, they were going to extend their house - the builders have now been postponed - and then she wanted to start a family.
She said: “It will be another thing to put on hold.
“Yeah, definitely,” she admits haltingly. She has 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 admits until last year she had not been checking her breasts.
She only started after being on 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.
She credits the charity with saving her life. Doctors said discovery just three months later could have resulted in a “very different story”. She reveals the tumour was so virulent it “doubled in size” between her scans alone.
Throughout her honeymoon Amy said nothing to Ben. Nor when she made a GP appointment back home.
She even went to her emergency referral alone.
But there, nurses suggested she needed someone.
She said: "They told me it looked suspicious of cancer - 50-95% chance.
“I think Ben was a bit in denial, he thought it was going to be benign. Mr Positive.”
Both tried to carry on as normal as they waited for a week. “We did two dance shows,” says Amy.
“Then I had a phone call to say we needed to speak to the doctor in person and you just knew then.”
Amy can’t recall if she cried, or perhaps prefers not to.
She said: “I just wanted to know, what’s the plan."
“I’ve had enough to deal with in my life with my Crohn’s. It’s not fair."
But the dancer decided that anger won’t help. Her immediate mission has been to stop this happening to anyone else.
She the admits that she encouraged her friends to feel her lump.
“I want to get people to check, and I wanted them to be aware of what they’re looking for."
“I’ve had so many messages from women who have started checking
“Even if ten people start, I’ll have done my job.”
* For more information about breast health awareness visit coppafeel.org
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