Amy Dowden "cried more" over losing her hair than any other part of her cancer battle.
Amy Dowden was diagnosed with cancer in 2023
The 'Strictly Come Dancing' star underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, and she also contracted life-threatening sepsis while undergoing treatment, but she admitted nothing made her as emotional as shaving off her locks before she lost them as a side-effect of her treatment.
In an extract from her book 'Dancing in the Rain' published by the Mail on Sunday newspaper, she wrote: "My life away from Strictly was distinctly unglamorous. With each new chemo session, the next challenge was growing more and more obvious. Before I could say goodbye to cancer, I would have to say goodbye to my hair. And I think I cried more over that than anything else.
I would have to trim it, clip it and finally shave it completely – and then face the terrifying decision to appear on national TV with a fuzzy bald head."
Because of her treatment, Amy and her husband Ben Jones had to go through fertility treatment so she could have her eggs retrieved before undergoing chemo, and she felt "really lucky" because of how successful the process was.
She wrote: "At times I was an emotional mess and broke down in floods of tears. Going through surgery, facing chemo and now putting a lot of hormones into my body, my life had changed so radically in such a short space of time. There were no guarantees, our consultant warned – but at last there was good news.
"I responded well, and ten days later, a medical team retrieved nine eggs. Normally, they'd expect two or three embryos from that number, so we were really lucky to end up with five healthy embryos at blastocyst stage. I was over the moon when the hospital rang.
"I was working that day in the studio with Carlos [Gu] from Strictly and when I told him, he cried out: 'I'm a godmother!' Dianne [Buswell] asked me if they were girls or boys. 'What? We don't know that!' I laughed.
"Their reaction made me ache to be with the pro dancers full-time. They were about to go into training for 'Strictly 2023', but of course I'd been forced to pull out when I was given my diagnosis."
Amy credited her fellow 'Strictly' professionals with helping her recovery.
She wrote: "Slowly I grew stronger again – helped in no small measure by my friends at 'Strictly'.
"My goal was to get to the show as often as I could. The production team checked that everybody around me was OK – that nobody had a cold or a temperature – and I only went on my good weekends, ten days after having chemo.
"But being back in the 'Strictly' fold with my 'Strictly' family was the best medicine. I needed it for my mental health, to have something to look forward to and keep me going.
"It's exciting just being backstage, even when you're not performing, because you're still soaking up the joy and glitz and glamour of it all."