Strictly Come Dancing star Amy Dowden has revealed that she nearly died after she was rushed to hospital with sepsis and blood clots following her first two rounds of chemotherapy.
Earlier this year the dancer, who has been a Strictly pro since 2017 and danced with celebrities including musician Tom Fletcher, comedian Brian Conley and presenter Karim Zeroual, revealed that she had been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.
Doctors have also found tumours in other parts of the 33-year-old’s body and previously underwent a single mastectomy.
It hasn’t been plain sailing for the professional dancer, who has recalled her near-death experience and explained how “serious” her condition was in a new interview.
The BBC star told The Mirror: “After both my first cycles I developed the life-threatening side-effects that can come with chemo, so I had it all in the first month.
“I had a temperature and didn’t realise the severity of having a temperature. I stood up, collapsed, Mum rang the emergency number and they said, ‘phone an ambulance immediately’.
“From there everything got very serious. I remember going into hospital and them telling me I had an infection, but the following day it got very bad, I was unresponsive to antibiotics for hours,” she added.
“We met the paramedics a week later and they said if I had gone to bed that night, I might not have woken up the next morning.”
Dowden shared that her last memories were of her being surrounded by doctors. Once alert again, a nurse told her that she had gone into septic shock and that her blood pressure was so low that her vital organs almost started failing.
The Welsh dancer admitted that she can’t recall much from her time in intensive care but was told by medics that her infection markers were at “dangerous levels” until the medication started working.
Dowden explained that her sepsis was caused by an infection she picked just up before her treatment while the blood clots in her left arm were because of complications caused by her port, which administers chemotherapy drugs to her body.
She is now on blood thinners now for six months after the “frightening” experience.
