“I felt like I’d lost everything,” says Strictly Come Dancing pro Amy Dowden on her state of mind at the end of her cancer treatment in 2024. “I’d lost all my hair, I’d lost my strength, I was a different weight. I was ready to hang my shoes up.”
For fans of Dowden’s zestful dancing and sweet, Welsh giggle, it seems unthinkable that she could doubt her place under the glitter ball. But in May 2023, aged just 32, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Then, in July of that year, she was diagnosed with a second type of cancer requiring chemotherapy.
The treatment meant she missed that season of Strictly and triggered a cascade of brutal side effects: she contracted sepsis in August, broke her foot in November and then suffered a blood clot on her lung in December.
Terrified of losing her identity as a dancer, she returned to Strictly in 2024 because “I just couldn’t face watching another series on the sofa at home”. She was paired with JLS singer JB Gill, and the pair shook it “like a Polaroid picture” while jiving to Outkast’s “Hey Ya!”. But she collapsed backstage with a stress fracture in her shin on the sixth week of the competition and was replaced by Lauren Oakley.
