Strictly Come Dancing’s Amy Dowden reveals sepsis battle during chemotherapy
Strictly Come Dancing professional Amy Dowden has revealed she contracted sepsis after her first round of chemotherapy earlier this month.
The 33-year-old was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in May and underwent a mastectomy.
In July, the dancer from Caerphilly, South Wales, told fans she had received a second diagnosis of “another type of cancer”.
Amy Dowden and McFly’s Tom Fletcher on Strictly Come Dancing. Pic: BBC/Guy Levy
The dancer, who has also presented a BBC documentary on her battle with Crohn’s disease, has now opened up about her ordeal with sepsis that happened just two days after starting chemotherapy.
“I wasn’t feeling too bad that day, just sick, but a couple of hours later I started having a temperature of 37.7C,” she told Hello! Magazine.
“At the time, I didn’t realise that having a temperature of 37.5C or above could be fatal for a chemo patient. I just thought it was my reaction to chemo, but as it turned out, I had already got an infection.”
Over the next day, she improved.
“The Strictly producers were checking in on me, and I was sending videos of me on my walk. I couldn’t believe how good I was feeling.”
EastEnders star James Bye and Amy Dowden on Strictly Come Dancing in 2022
But she quickly deteriorated. Her mother Gillian said: “Amy’s symptoms got worse very, very quickly. At one point she felt ok, then suddenly she felt very ill – it happened in an instant.”
“She went to stand, then just sort of crumpled back on to the settee.”
Amy added: “I felt freezing cold but I was all clammy and shaking. My mum and dad rang my red card [which provides the chemotherapy team’s contact details and current treatment information] and they said to hang up and ring the ambulance.”
Strictly’s Amy Dowden recovering after surgery. Pic: Amy Dowden
She was rushed to hospital where she was treated in an intensive care unit (ICU) for sepsis and dangerously low pressure.
After changing the type of antibiotic, Amy recovered but her memory of the period remains hazy.
“The doctors and nurses were telling me I had sepsis and that it was life-threatening but I wasn’t taking it in. I didn’t become properly aware until later. I told my dad: ‘I’ve got sepsis’ and he said: ‘I know!’.”
Pic: @amy_dowden
She has since been able to continue with chemotherapy.
Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection which happens when someone’s immune system overreacts to an infection and starts to damage their body’s own tissues and organs.
Dowden, who married fellow professional dancer Ben Jones in July last year, previously said she had found a lump in her breast the day before she planned to go on her belated honeymoon this year.
Amy Dowden and her husband Ben Jones. Pic: Rex/Shutterstock
She joined BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2017, and has had celebrity partners including comedian Brian Conley, Red Dwarf’s Danny John-Jules and McFly’s Tom Fletcher.
According to reports, Dowden will not be partnered with a celebrity for the upcoming series of Strictly Come Dancing while she undergoes treatment.
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Joy star James Norton on the ‘postcode lottery’ of IVF – and playing the scientist who was part of creating the first ‘test-tube baby’
Actor James Norton, who stars in a new film telling the story of the world’s first “test-tube baby”, has criticised how “prohibitively expensive” IVF can be in the UK.
In Joy, the star portrays the real-life scientist Bob Edwards, who – along with obstetrician Patrick Steptoe and embryologist Jean Purdy – spent a decade tirelessly working on medical ways to help infertility.
The film charts the 10 years leading up to the birth of Louise Joy Brown, who was dubbed the world’s first test-tube baby, in 1978.
In the UK, statistics show the proportion of IVF cycles paid for by the NHS has dropped from 40% to 27% in the last decade
Norton, who is best known for playing Tommy Lee Royce in the BAFTA-winning series Happy Valley, told Sky News he has friends who were IVF babies and other friends who have had their own children thanks to the fertility treatment.
“But I didn’t know about these three scientists and their sacrifice, tenacity and skill,” he said. The star hopes the film will be “a catalyst for conversation” about the treatment and its availability.
“We know for a fact that Jean, Bob and Patrick would not have liked the fact that IVF is now so means based,” he said. “It’s prohibitively expensive for some… and there is a postcode lottery which means that some people are precluded from that opportunity.”
Bill Nighy, Thomasin McKenzie and James Norton star in Joy. All pics: Netflix/ Kerry Brown
Now, IVF is considered a wonder of modern medicine. More than 12 million people owe their existence today to the treatment Edwards, Steptoe and Purdy worked so hard to devise.
But Joy shows how public backlash in the years leading up to Louise’s birth saw the team vilified – accused of playing God and creating “Frankenstein babies”.
Bill Nighy and Thomasin McKenzie star alongside Norton, with the script written by acclaimed screenwriter Jack Thorne and his wife Rachel Mason.
The couple went through seven rounds of IVF themselves to conceive their son.
Norton portrays scientist Bob Edwards, while McKenzie plays embryologist Jean Purdy
While the film is set in the 1970s, the reality is that societal pressures haven’t changed all that much for many going through IVF today – with the costs now both emotional and financial.
“IVF is still seen as a luxury product, as something that some people get access to and others don’t,” said Thorne, speaking about their experiences in the UK.
“Louise was a working-class girl with working-class parents. Working class IVF babies are very, very rare now.”
In the run-up to the US election, Donald Trump saw IVF as a campaigning point – promising his government, or insurance companies, would pay for the treatment for all women should he be elected. He called himself the “father of IVF” at a campaign event – a remark described as “quite bizarre” by Kamala Harris.
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Bill Nighy ‘proud’ of new film on IVF breakthrough
“I don’t think Trump is a blueprint for this,” Norton said. “I don’t know how that fits alongside his questions around pro-choice.”
Read more:
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In the UK, statistics from fertility regulator HEFA show the proportion of IVF cycles paid for by the NHS has dropped from 40% to 27% in the last decade.
“It’s so expensive,” Norton said. “Those who want a child should have that choice… and some people’s lack of access to this incredibly important science actually means that people don’t have the choice.”
Joy is in UK cinemas from 15 November, and on Netflix from 22 November
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