Cancer-stricken Amy Dowden returns to Strictly for the first time since diagnosis
STRICTLY Come Dancing star Amy Dowden smiled as she returned to the BBC show for the first time since her cancer diagnosis.
The Strictly Come Dancing professional, 33, revealed in May that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer.
It’s meant she’s been forced to pull out of this year’s series of the hit dance competition.
Amy was seen on Saturday morning looking in good spirits as she left a London hotel and headed to Elstree Studios ahead of tonight’s Strictly Movie Night.
Amy looked stylish in a stone grey denim shirt dress teamed with a pair of white trainers and a brown leather handbag.
The Welsh dancer will be making a special appearance on tonight’s show.
She took to social media earlier this week to share her support for her fellow pros and their celeb partners ahead of the third live show.
Amy shared a throwback photo of her wearing tiger makeup from when she performed the samba in 2019 with her partner and TV presenter Karim Zeroual.
She wrote: “I love Movie week on Strictly! Who’s excited?”
The ballroom dancer has been sharing her health journey with fans.
Amy underwent a mastectomy a month after her diagnosis, but was she told how doctors had found cancer elsewhere in her body.
Brave Amy has since started chemotherapy treatment and recently made the heart-wrenching decision to shave her hair.
However, in a shocking health update, Amy has revealed complications after a round of chemo nearly cost her her life.
Speaking to The Mirror, she explained: “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.”
She continued: “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’.”
Amy, who had developed an infection, went into septic shock – with her blood pressure so low her organs could’ve started to fail.
Explaining what happened, she recalled: “I had severely low blood pressure, a low heart rate, I wasn’t passing urine for 14 hours, my infection markers were at dangerous levels. I had three different types of antibiotics and I finally responded to the third type.
“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.”
Despite being assured by her doctor that she had just been unlucky and picked up an infection prior to chemo, Amy had another hospital dash.
After her second round of chemo she developed clots which she said left her ‘frightened’ and has now been put on blood thinners.
Amy joined Strictly Come Dancing in 2017 and quickly became a fan-favourite.
Last year the dancer was paired with EastEnders star James Bye.
