Strictly Come Dancing professional Amy Dowden has told fans that her breast cancer surgery has gone “well”.
The 32-year-old Welsh ballroom and Latin American dancer, who joined the BBC celebrity competition show in 2017, announced in May that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
Caerphilly-born Dowden said in an Instagram story on Thursday that her surgery “went well” and gave a “big thank you” to her surgeons and nurses who had been “utterly amazing”.
Dowden added: “(I’m) very sore but focusing on the positives, they said the surgery went well! Thanks for all the support and messages.”
The dancer had shared an Instagram image on Wednesday showing her in a hospital bed saying she was “ready for this fight and more determined than ever to get back on the dance floor”.
Fellow Strictly dancers including Vito Coppola, Dianne Buswell, Karen Hauer and Jowita Przystal, together with presenters Rylan Clark and Zoe Ball, all expressed their support.
Last month, Dowden told Hello! magazine that she had found a lump in her breast in April, the day before going to the Maldives on her honeymoon with fellow professional dancer Ben Jones.
After realising the lump had grown during her holiday, Dowden said she went to the GP before being sent for an emergency referral and then finding out in May that she had stage three breast cancer.
She said: “My doctor explained to me that there are three grades, and three is the most aggressive, but they feel like they’ve caught mine early and to not be too alarmed because grade three would be expected in somebody of my age.”
Dowden – who was a finalist on Strictly four years ago alongside her partner, the TV presenter and actor Karim Zeroual – married Jones in a star-studded Welsh ceremony last July after becoming engaged on New Year’s Eve in 2017.
She has also been vocal in raising awareness about Crohn’s disease, which the dancer revealed she was suffering from in 2019.
Dowden said: “With what I’ve done for Crohn’s, I want to do the same here. If I can try and turn this negative into a positive, it’s going to help me get through this.
“You just don’t ever think it’s going to happen to you. I hadn’t thought it was possible to get breast cancer at my age.
“My mum has had breast cancer, but she had it at a later age, in her 50s.”