Amy Dowden opens up on fertility journey and how Strictly saved her life

One of the shiniest professional dancers on Strictly Come Dancing, at 34 she is in the prime of her life – walking proof of the fact that, as she tells me and is evident in a moving and inspiring new BBC documentary, if she can get cancer, anyone can.

"Ultimately, Strictly saved my life," she begins, explaining how partnering with McFly's Tom Fletcher on the 2021 season of the dancing show had serendipitous consequences. Just before her wedding to fellow dancer Ben Jones in 2022, Dowden joined Fletcher’s wife Giovanna on a charity walk for CoppaFeel!, the breast cancer charity.

"I met some incredible people on that trip who’d had breast cancer in their 20s, and I’m thinking, 'I’m being a hypocrite, trekking to raise awareness for checking yourself and I don’t even do it.' So I started regularly checking myself, and a few months later, in April 2023, I found a lump."

With her discovery just before her honeymoon in the Maldives, Dowden chose not to share her fear with her new husband until, following tests, she was called back to hospital a month later. "The nurse told me I needed someone to come with me; Ben was with me when I was diagnosed.

"I didn’t think I would get breast cancer," she continues. "I was 32 years old. I was a physically fit dancer on Strictly, I’d just got married… Mammograms don’t start until you’re in your 50s."

This aspect is one point Dowden hopes will land with viewers of new documentary, Strictly Amy: Cancer and Me. "I want to help educate younger people to check themselves, and also understand the implications for fertility."

Indeed, for the Welsh dancer, learning she had stage three breast cancer was only half the blow she suffered that day. "Their very next words were, 'What are your fertility plans?' It was a double stab in the gut.

"Ben and I had been together a long time, and always talked about having children. I had a feeling about the cancer before they told me, so I was prepared for that, but not the fertility side. That’s when I felt my whole world come crashing down."

The couple, who were British National Amateur Latin Champions in 2016 and run their own dance school on top of Dowden's Strictly duties, were told that her cancer treatment was likely to damage her ovaries and bring on early menopause, so retrieving and storing her eggs was the best option. The news was a shock: "I had no idea. My mum had breast cancer but she’d had three children."

Dowden had surgery for a single mastectomy in June 2023, with her chemotherapy treatment scheduled for six weeks later. That allowed a tiny window to recover from one gruelling experience before she embarked on the next. Two weeks after her surgery, she was injecting herself with fertility drugs ahead of the egg retrieval.

"It was scary," she recalls. "I was still processing everything going on with the cancer, it was tough getting our heads around that and then we had to face this, too. It was a very stressful time – I was pumped with a load of hormones, emotional because of everything, then I went into menopause on the day I started chemo. My body had no idea what was going on."

The wait to find out if the retrieval had succeeded was "endless", Dowden remembers, and the documentary includes the emotional moment when she got the news.

"We're not deluded," she reflects. "We know it's not easy to get pregnant, but we had one chance. By then I wasn’t expecting any good news, it felt like every appointment was getting worse, but that day, luck was on my side."

Doctors were able to collect five embryos, which now sit in a freezer for the day when Dowden feels ready to consider pregnancy. "I’ll have to discuss all that with my doctor in the future," she says. "For now, I just want to stay fit and healthy."

By then the cameras were rolling. When Dowden decided to film the aftermath of her cancer diagnosis and her treatment, she remembered how her 2020 documentary on living with Crohn’s disease had raised awareness. Filming that, she says, meant "everyone had already seen me at my worst, so I thought, 'Let’s turn this negative into a positive.'

"I didn’t have long to decide, but the BBC said that if at any point it got too much we could stop. It was a working relationship where we made all the decisions together."

Did it help or hinder to go through her treatment in front of a production crew? She’s too honest to say it was all positive. "At some points, yes, it gave me a focus and a purpose. At other times, it was tough. You’re tired, you’re poorly, you want to be in bed. There were moments when it was hard but, overall, it did give me a purpose and a focus."

Sure enough, the documentary doesn't hold back from showing the various aspects of what Dowden went through last year, with her family beside her.

"I know it was as hard for them as it was for me," she says. We see her husband Ben lost in thought as he takes in the implications of Dowden’s illness and what it might mean for their family life, and we see Dowden terrified to tears by the prospect of her first chemo session.

The cameras stopped filming only once, when she became dangerously ill with sepsis during treatment and ended up in intensive care.

Otherwise, it’s all there, including the aspect of breast cancer treatment that can be so defining for many women – the moment when Dowden realised trying to keep her hair was a losing battle.

Initially, she tried a cold cap – a tight-fitting hat worn during chemotherapy, its cooling effect intended to limit blood flow to the scalp in the hope of preventing or reducing hair loss. Though determined to wear it, Dowden found it increasingly intolerable.

"It's ice cold," she explains. "You have to put it on for half an hour before and wear it for 90 minutes after your chemo session. Plus I had to have my chemo diluted, meaning the sessions were even longer.

"By my fourth cycle, I was very sick because of my Crohn’s and I was already balding. The nurse said, 'Your body has gone through so much, is the cold cap really worth it?' So I felt like I had permission to give it up."

Instead, Dowden invited her friends and family round for what she calls "a hair-cutting party", during which she shaved her head. "I knew I was losing it anyway. I felt so distressed, I couldn’t brush my own hair without leaving a trail of it, and I thought, 'Why am I putting myself through this?'

"I realised I couldn’t be in control of anything else, but I could control this. We did it in a fun way, having a party with some non-alcoholic prosecco. I'm really glad I took the decision. I felt empowered and very proud of myself."

Sharing her bald head with her closest loved ones was one thing, revealing it in front of millions of television viewers used to her flowing blonde locks was another, but that’s what happened when Dowden visited the Strictly studio a few weeks into the 2023 season she'd been forced to miss.

Her plan had been to wear a wig for her role reading out the terms and conditions on the show, which had made her name since she joined in 2017. But just a few minutes before, she decided to step out bald.

She smiles, remembering the moment: "The reaction was so rewarding. Up until then, I would always cover myself up, even at home. If the builders came round to the house, I’d put on a hat. But that evening on Strictly felt very liberating. It didn’t matter and I didn’t have to hide away any more."

Dowden also shared many aspects of her treatment on social media, something that brought huge waves of support, interest and gratitude, but also, inevitably, trolling – "calling me a narcissist and attention seeker, saying that I should go away and get on with it, that I should quit moaning because it wasn’t even stage four".

"One told me I looked like Matt Lucas, which I probably did because I was bald."

She sounds rightly indignant. "I was lucky to have support around me, but some people don’t, and those messages could tip somebody over the edge. People need to be educated. Something needs to be done about it because this is online bullying and it’s not OK."

I ask if the last year has changed her as a person. "Absolutely," she replies, swiftly. "I had my identity stripped away, I gained two stone, lost my eyebrows, couldn’t dance. You soon see what really matters and what not to stress about. I don’t worry about anything now. If I have a hot flush from the menopause and I’m sweating, so be it."

If the negatives of her experience are clear, Dowden is quick to stress the positives, including her rock of a husband, her family, the wider Strictly family ("who couldn’t have done more") and the focus on getting back on the dance floor herself.

And now she is, stepping back out for the 20th anniversary season, appearing as a beaming light among several clouds, with allegations of bullying hanging over the show. As for the seemingly endless speculation in the press, she bats it away.

"When you’ve been through what I’ve been through, you realise what’s important and what to focus on. I’m back on the show I grew up watching, in its 20th year.

"And for my family too, after the last year, it’s a great gift for them. I don’t get caught up in the press and media, I just focus on the present and concentrate on my steps."

I finish by asking Dowden what it will mean to be back in her sequins and dance shoes come launch night. She beams. "It’s everything. I saw the wardrobe people today and I was buzzing. It’s like my first year again!

"I want to give hope to other people who’ve gone through something, and show them that I’ve come through the other side and I’m back doing what I love. I’m super grateful. I’m going to have a smile on my face the whole time."

Strictly Amy: Cancer and Me will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Monday 26th August 2024.

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