Strictly star: My battle with crippling disease
SHE has lit up the Strictly dancefloor with her energetic performances.
Behind the scenes, however, professional dancer Amy Dowden has spent years battling the debilitating disease Crohn’s.
Miss Dowden, 30, said living with the long-term condition – which causes severe inflammation of the digestive system – has left her living ‘in fear’.
The Welsh dancer experienced a severe flare-up of the disease that left her hospitalised earlier this year.
In a BBC documentary she revealed the illness had previously left her in so much pain she told her parents ‘I can’t fight this any more’.
Miss Dowden, who joined Strictly Come Dancing in 2017, said: ‘It has been more than a dance show to me, it got me through the darkest times of my illness.’
She added: ‘Dancing has pulled me through my Crohn’s but it’s a battle. I live in fear that what I love the most could be taken away.’
Miss Dowden, who will dance with former Royal Marine JJ Chalmers in this year’s series, first experienced symptoms aged 11 but wasn’t diagnosed with Crohn’s until she was 19.
In Strictly Amy: Crohn’s and Me she revealed that she had been hospitalised more than 100 times and aged 18 would often be there at least once a month. Describing one night in hospital, she said: ‘I rang my parents and... said to them “I can’t do this any more”. I was just in so much pain.’
No one else in her family, including her twin Rebecca, suffers from Crohn’s. In difficult scenes filmed by her fiance Ben Jones, Miss Dowden is seen throwing up before she is later pictured lying on a bed in hospital.
Miss Dowden, who is from Caerphilly in South Wales, said: ‘To the public watching me with all our make-up, fake tan, glitz, glamour and spotlights, it’s a different world.’
She added: ‘I don’t think they could ever imagine then that this could be me the next day.’