Amy Dowden opens up on terrifying wait for surgery after cancer diagnosis
Her face is beautifully made up, hair immaculately straightened, her smiley cheekbones are as perky as ever.
At first glance, there is little to separate Amy Dowden who sits in her living room in fluffy slippers, from the star dancer who lights up the Strictly Come Dancing ballroom - except a slim, protective cushion under her right arm.
This, and the fact the 32-year-old cannot move that limb, are the only outward signs of the single mastectomy she underwent just six days beforehand, and the grade three, aggressive breast cancer she was diagnosed with only four weeks ago.
Bravely giving her first newspaper interview since that frightening diagnosis, and speaking for the first time since gruelling surgery, she admits hesitantly “this is the first day I have felt like Amy”.
When we meet on Tuesday, her Welsh accent is sometimes so quiet as she speaks of the devastating blows she’s weathering, it’s hard to catch. She admits a close friend has helped her get ready because the surgery has rendered her, for now, unable even to turn the handle in her shower.
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Amy chats to Emily (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)She returned home from hospital last Friday. Surgeons removed two tumours and three further cancer “specks”, plus some lymph nodes, from her right breast, which have now been sent for analysis.
“The cancer is in the lab now, which is the most important thing,” she says, resolutely.
“The hardest time was waiting for surgery, thinking ‘I have cancer inside me’.
“You’re thinking ‘It’s grade three, what if it’s spreading, what if it spreads tonight?’
“The feeling of it made me feel disgusted, disgusting. That’s the time I was randomly crying, emotional.
“But we drove away and I thought, ‘It’s gone’.
“I’m a doer, I feel we have done something.”
That sense of control helps, but she must now wait until next week for her histology report to tell her what stage her cancer is at, and if it has spread. Only then will she know what treatment is needed.
Amy revealed online three weeks ago she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, after feeling a lump in her breast just a day before she flew on a belated honeymoon with her husband Ben Jones in April.
The pair, dance partners who run a dance school near their West Midlands’ home, only married last July. Poignantly, the wedding photos Amy sits surrounded by, the bride and groom duck ornaments on the shelves, are brand new.
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Doctors were able to reconstruct her breast, inserting a small implant as part of her three-hour surgery last Wednesday.
“I haven’t looked, I’m waiting for the bruising and swelling to go down,” she admits. “I don’t want to shock or upset myself.”
Amy gives a thumbs-up in hospital
Amy before surgeryShe’s relieved. They weren’t sure they’d be able to reconstruct straight away.
She continues: “I wasn’t able to use my own tissue because they said there wasn’t enough. But they had been worried it might be too bruised and they would need to put an expander in.
“Normally you have breast tissue, fat and skin but they said I had no fat.”
Ben has looked at the scarred area. The pair met in their early 20s as dance partners. He’s rarely ruffled.
When Amy had her drains removed in hospital, he observed.
“He said it looked fine, normal. That’s Ben for you!” she smiles. “He wasn’t fazed.”
She laughs: “Before I went for surgery he said to my boob, ‘Nice knowing you’. That’s so Ben.”
Her fears before surgery weren’t around altered appearance.
“On Strictly the costume and make-up teams can do amazing things,” she explains.
But because the dancer also lives with Crohn’s Disease, an inflammatory bowel condition first experienced when she was 11, and flare-ups can result in hospital treatment, she was afraid of feeling severely ill from the anaesthetic.
“I was really nervous before and I was in a lot of pain when I came round, and sick, and freezing,” she admits. “But since having my drains taken out I have coped well. Every day has got better in terms of soreness.
“I think how quickly I have felt myself again has made me feel more positive.”
Amy with husband Ben Jones
Amy on Strictly with James Bye (BBC/Guy Levy)Yet all the positivity in the world cannot disguise the obstacles Amy is having to navigate.
Beneath her careful make-up shadows of anxiety pass.
When she receives her report, doctors will decide if she needs radiotherapy only, or chemotherapy too. There is a 50/50 chance.
A Crohn’s flare-up could make the latter difficult.
And because her mum also faced breast cancer, albeit older, aged 51, Amy has been tested for the BRCA gene. If that is positive, placing her at higher risk, she will face a second mastectomy.
But whatever her plan is, she must meet with a fertility expert next week to arrange urgent treatment before she begins. Her fertility would be impacted by cancer drugs.
Amy is movingly candid about wanting children. She and Ben, with whom she won the British National Latin Dance Championships, had already begun planning.
First, they were going to extend their house - the builders have now been postponed - and then she dearly wanted a family.
“It will be another thing to put on hold,” she says. She doesn’t cry, but her eyes glaze.
“Yeah, definitely,” she admits haltingly. She has always wanted to be a mum.
“We run a dance school with lots of little girls and boys, I’m a dancing mum already,” she says.
“They have promised me,” she says of her discussions with doctors about the possibility of having children. “There are no guarantees but they will give it their best shot.”
She admits until last year she had not been checking her breasts.
A trek with the breast cancer charity Coppafeel!, organised by Giovanna Fletcher, the wife of McFly’s Tom, Amy’s 2021 Strictly partner, prompted her.
She credits the charity with saving her life. Doctors said discovery just three months later could have resulted in a “very different story”. She reveals the tumour was so virulent it “doubled in size” between her scans alone.
Throughout her honeymoon Amy said nothing to Ben. Nor when she made a GP appointment back home.
She even went to her emergency referral alone.
But there, nurses suggested she needed someone.
“They told me it looked suspicious of cancer - 50-95% chance,” she recalls.
“I think Ben was a bit in denial, he thought it was going to be benign. Mr Positive.”
Both tried to carry on as normal as they waited for a week. “We did two dance shows,” says Amy.
“Then I had a phone call to say we needed to speak to the doctor in person and you just knew then.”
She can’t recall if she cried, or perhaps prefers not to.
“I just wanted to know, what’s the plan,” she says.
She has felt “angry”. How could she not?
“I’ve had enough to deal with in my life with my Crohn’s. It’s not fair,” she says.
But she’s decided anger won’t help.
Her immediate mission has been to stop this happening to anyone else.
She casually mentions how she encouraged her friends to feel her lump.
“I want to get people to check, and I wanted them to be aware of what they’re looking for,” she explains.
I say I’ve never heard of anyone doing that before. She shrugs.
“I’ve had so many messages from women who have started checking,” she explains.
“Even if ten people start, I’ll have done my job.”
* For more information about breast health awareness visit coppafeel.org
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