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Amy Dowden has given a heartbreaking health update, saying she doesn’t think she will ever become a mother after years of battling breast cancer.
The Strictly Come Dancing star, 35, has undergone chemotherapy, fertility treatment and a mastectomy after being diagnosed with the disease in 2023.
The star said during her Saturday night appearance on Stand Up To Cancer: ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever have the honour of becoming a mum which I desperately want to.
‘Five weeks ago I had another mastectomy, so I’m no longer attached to my body. I’m so proud of how far it’s come and I’m so grateful for another shot of life.’
‘A cancer diagnosis changes you forever, I’m no longer the person I was and that’s not by choice.’
‘After I rang that chemo bell, I felt the effects of chemotherapy more than ever. I was drained, I was scared, I had this whole journey ahead and I was at a mental all time low.
‘I never thought I was going to get back on the dance floor, I couldn’t see how I was going to get Amy back again. I hated the way I looked, I had no energy and I was petrified.
‘I used to cry myself to sleep. I just longed for that old Amy back and I know I’m never ever going to get her back.’
She added: ‘Being able get back on the dance floor, I’m going on tour with my friend next year… I’m just so grateful for my medical team, the doctors and nurses who have kept me alive.’
Last year Amy revealed how she has created five embryos with her husband Ben Jones for when they are ready to have children.
Following her diagnosis, she was told there was a two-week window for her and Ben to try and create embryos that could be frozen for future use.
Amy, who first joined TV’s Strictly as a pro dancer in 2017, said: ‘In the words of ‘Sorry, Amy, you have cancer’, what I found harder was in the next sentence.
‘You know, newly married, we’d only been married in July (2022), and this was only in the spring (2023) now.
‘And his next sentence was ‘And what’s your fertility plans because unfortunately you’ve got a hormone-fed cancer’ – and I never knew anything about that – and basically ‘We’re gonna have to shut down your hormones’.
‘I’m sat there with my husband, and obviously children were on the radar or, you know, plans.
‘And that I think was like a double stab to the gut, and what I found probably harder than the words ‘you have cancer’.’
However, the devastated couple were then given a small window of hope.
Speaking on Big Fish with Spencer Matthews podcast, Amy added: ‘The NHS offer an incredible service, that once anyone is diagnosed with cancer, and especially if they have to go through chemotherapy, they are offered the chance to have their eggs removed, and put in the freezer.
‘Sometimes your body doesn’t respond, because you’re going through cancer. I had a two-week window. And in that two week window, we managed.
‘And so we got embryos. Now we’ve got five little Amy and Bens.’
But Amy said she and Ben will still have to remain patient and wait longer than they would have liked because of the type of breast cancer she had.
She said: ‘So hopefully in the future. I’ll have to wait a little bit of time, unfortunately, because I have got a hormone-fed cancer.
‘You do develop hormones when you’re pregnant. So yeah, obviously, it’s not when we plan to, but hopefully, I will get the opportunity to.’
She continued: ‘I didn’t realise it was different types (of breast cancer). And I didn’t realise your own body could be feeding the cancer.
‘Even if I didn’t have to have chemo, I would have needed to go for the egg treatment.
‘But for anybody diagnosed with cancer now, male or female, if they have to have chemo, because chemo kills every living cell in your body, good or bad, I would now never go to somebody if I knew they had cancer or had had cancer, (and) say ‘are you planning on having children?’
‘I don’t think there’s enough awareness out there about that, because I had no idea.
‘I think it’s a difficult question as it is, but certainly for anybody battling cancer, that would be in my mind, you know, knowing that they’ve got that to deal with as well.’
