Amy Dowden shaves her head amid cancer treatment
Strictly’s Amy Dowden has issued an urgent plea amid her cancer battle.
The dance professional and fan favourite has appealed to fans to get checked for breast cancer admitting: “I never thought I’d get cancer at this age.”
The 32-year-old took to her Instagram stories to mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a series of clips where she appeared in a furry robe with a hoodie covering her shaved head talking about her chemotherapy journey and the importance of going for regular check ups.
“It’s breast cancer awareness week… let’s get checking,” she said. “If just ten people from my post get to know your breasts or your chests, as this affects men and women, I’d have achieved something.
“You get a mammogram when you’re 50, so if you’re not checking under the age of 50, who is checking for you? No one,” she continued. “So you need to check please, please, please.
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“Cancer doesn’t have an age. I never thought at 32 I’d get diagnosed with cancer and my whole life just be put on a stop for all these months.
“I found it [the lumps] because I was checking so please, please, please… let’s all raise awareness.”
Back in June, the BBC star had hoped that she would only need radiotherapy and even stood a chance of returning to Strictly this year following her mastectomy.
At that point, three tumours, further cancer “specks” and some lymph nodes from her right breast had been removed.
However, just days afterwards she received the devastating news that doctors had found a second type of breast cancer in the tissue they removed, as well as more tumours and specks in her other breast.
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In an new interview, Amy recalled the “shock” she felt, as even the doctor wasn’t expecting to find what he did, telling her they would have to consider another mastectomy.
“I thought that’s Strictly with a partner wiped out, that’s my hair gone, that’s my life gone,” she told The Mirror. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ I was pretty adamant up until the day before, I had a meltdown, a crying fit going ‘I don’t want to do it’.”
However, medics then delivered the tragic news that she would be reducing her survival chances if she refused, with the surgeon telling Amy: “You can dance forever and ever afterwards.”
It wasn’t until she spoke to her former dance teacher in Wales that Amy fully realised what she would be giving up.
She had been undergoing IVF to create and freeze embryos before starting treatment and knew deep down that chemotherapy was the right option.
On her hopes of returning to Strictly, she added: “I dream every night of being back on the dance floor, but I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment.”
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