Amy Dowden cried more about losing her hair than any other aspect of her battle with cancer.
The Strictly Come Dancing star underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023. During treatment, she also developed life-threatening sepsis, but admitted that nothing made her more emotional than shaving off her locks before losing them as a side effect of the treatment.
In an extract from her book Dancing in the Rain, published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, she wrote: “My life away from Strictly was decidedly unglamorous. With each new chemotherapy session, the next challenge became more and more obvious. Before I could say goodbye to cancer, I had to say goodbye to my hair. And I think I cried more about that than anything else.”
I would have to trim it, clip it, and finally shave it completely – and then face the terrifying decision of appearing on national television with a scraggly bald head.”
Because of her treatment, Amy and her husband Ben Jones had to undergo fertility treatment so her eggs could be retrieved before chemotherapy, and she felt “really lucky” that the process was so successful.
She wrote: “At times I was emotionally exhausted and burst into tears. With the surgery, the chemotherapy and the many hormones that I now inject into my body, my life has changed so radically in such a short time. There are no guarantees, our doctor warned – but finally there was good news.”
“I responded well and ten days later a team of doctors retrieved nine eggs. Normally they would expect two or three embryos from that number, so we were really lucky to end up with five healthy embryos at the blastocyst stage. I was overjoyed when the hospital called.
“I was working in the studio that day with Carlos (Gu) from Strictly and when I told him he shouted: ‘I’m a godmother!’ Dianne (Buswell) asked me if they were girls or boys. ‘What? We don’t know!’ I laughed.
“Their reaction made me want to be a full-time professional dancer. They were about to start training for ‘Strictly 2023’, but of course I was forced to drop out when I got my diagnosis.”
Amy thanked her Strictly colleagues for their help in her recovery.
She wrote: “Slowly I got stronger again – not least thanks to the support of my friends on ‘Strictly’.
“My goal was to go to the show as often as possible. The production team checked that everyone around me was OK – that no one had a cold or a fever – and I only went on my good weekends, ten days after chemotherapy.
“But being back in Strictly territory with my Strictly family was the best medicine. I needed it for my mental health, to have something to look forward to and to motivate me to keep going.
“It’s exciting to be backstage even when you’re not performing because you still soak up the joy, the glitz and glamour of it all.”
