Strictly Come Dancing professional Amy Dowden has shared that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
The 32-year-old – who has been part of the Strictly family since joining the show in 2017 – told Hello! magazine that she received the news of her diagnosis last week.
During the interview, Amy explained that taking part in a charity walk for the cancer awareness charity Coppafeel! last year encouraged her to “make a conscious effort to check my breasts”, saying the organisation “has how potentially saved my life”.
Amy eventually discovered a lump in her breast last month, a day before she and her husband Ben were due to fly out for their belated honeymoon.
After monitoring the situation for a number of weeks, Amy visited her GP when she felt that the lump had become bigger.
“Everything happened so fast within that day,” she recalled. “I went on my own and didn’t tell anybody, but when I was there, the nurse said to me: ‘You need to have somebody here’ and that’s when Ben found out.
“They told me it was looking very suspicious and to prepare for the worst, hope for the best. They did the biopsy and then we had a wait.”
Amy added that she is still waiting on a treatment plan, but has been told this will include surgery.
“I don’t know what stage the cancer is yet, until I have an MRI scan and a biopsy on a second lump they have found in the same breast,” she said. “Once they’ve got that, they can give me a full prognosis.”
The Welsh performer said she hoped to raise awareness of breast cancer by speaking publicly about her diagnosis, as she previously has with Crohn’s disease, a condition she has lived with since she was a child.
Amy explained: “If I can try and turn this negative into a positive, it’s going to help me get through this.”
“I’ve been through quite a lot in my life and this is another hurdle,” Amy told the magazine. “But if I’m positive and strong, I’ve got a really good chance of getting back out on the dance floor as soon as possible.”
During her time on Strictly, Amy has performed with a number of celebrities, including McFly singer Tom Fletcher, actor Danny John-Jules and TV presenter Karim Zeroual, with whom she made it to the final in 2019.