Strictly's Amy Dowden: "I dream every night of being back on the dance floor"

Unfortunately, she could not participate in Strictly Come Dancing 2023 after receiving a grade three breast cancer diagnosis in May, for which she has been receiving treatment in recent months.

Dowden told the Daily Mirror that she is cautiously hoping to be working again in the foreseeable future: "I dream every night of being back on the dance floor. But I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment."

The celebrated talent went on to discuss the "life-threatening side-effects" she suffered in a month of chemotherapy – sepsis in the first cycle (caused by an infection she picked up before treatment began) and blood clots in the second.

Dowden shared: "I remember going into hospital and them telling me I had an infection, but the following day it got very bad. I was unresponsive to antibiotics for hours.

"My last memory is a load of doctors around me in the early hours of Sunday morning. On Monday, a nurse explained I had gone into septic shock. They said my blood pressure was that low my vital organs would have started failing."

She continued: "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."

It was hoped that her second cycle of chemotherapy would go more smoothly, but this resulted in blood clots which also required her to be hospitalised as her "arm swelled up and went purple" and she was "really short of breath".

She is now on blood thinners to combat the risk.

In the latest season premiere of Strictly Come Dancing, presenters Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman sent well wishes to Dowden, referring to her as "our Welsh dragon".

Strictly Come Dancing continues on BBC One at 6:20pm on Saturday 7th October 2023. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

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