TELLS OF TV STAR’S BRAVE OFFER I would not let Katie give me her lung

stairs at her home in West Sussex. She said: “I thought th that maybe, at 59, I was just gettin getting out of shape. So I signed up for extra spin classes.”

But th the more she worked out, the worse it g got, and she couldn’t shake off a dry, ras rasping cough.

Amy w went back and forth to the GP for five y years and finally, in March last year, a ch chest X-ray at a clinic in Hove, East Sussex, Suss was arranged. She said: “I still thou thought I had d asthma so s I went a l one to t he follow-up appointm appointment.

“But w what I was met wi with was terrifying terrifying.

“The d doctor told me: ‘I do don’t think it’s can cancer but what I th think you do have is not good. Th There are a couple o of drugs that can h help. But don’t Go Google it or you’ll get upset.’” Of course, Amy did Google it and discovered the horror of IPF, a lung disease twice as common as cervical cancer.

Amy said: “It causes progressive scarring of the lungs, meaning it’s harder to breathe and gets worse over time.

“And then I saw the next line. There was no cure – sufferers were only given three to five years after diagnosis.

“It didn’t make sense. I’d always been fit and healthy, I I’d d n never so much as had a cigarette.

“But as I read fu further I saw it’s not li linked to smoking, in fa fact they didn’t know w what causes it.”

Two weeks later A Amy went with Katie an and Sophie for her fir first consultation at th the Royal Brompton Hospital, H London, where wh the specialist confirmed co it was IPF. She Sh said: “Looking back ba now I wonder why