Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas recently suffered a spine injury (Image: BBC)
Strictly Come Dancing head judge Shirley Ballas has admitted she missed several key health appointments including important results pertaining to her spine because she simply couldn’t keep track of them. In September 2024 the star revealed she was possibly facing surgery on her back as she opened up about her health struggles. She said her back condition had “deteriorated” over the previous 12 months.
Speaking to OK! magazine, the glamorous 65-year-old shared: “I’ve been to see three specialists, and I may need surgery. It’s not a choice; I will have to get it sorted. It can wait until after Strictly because I have a high tolerance for pain anyway, and it’s something I’ve been living with for many, many years, but it’s just deteriorated over the course of the last year.” Following that revelation in mid-January this year the star was rushed to hospital after a fall and spent the day there undergoing checks and scans as she feared she’d cracked her skull and her back was in a lot of pain.
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At the time she revealed on Instagram that “everything hurts” after a horrific fall.
En route to an appointment with a physiotherapist, she shared on her Stories: “So just on my way to the physio now to see John after this neck head thing that happened.
“The spine, the back, the lower back, the knee, the ankle – everything hurts. So I’m going to go, and he’s gonna check all my spine and make sure it’s good, and then I’ll go home and have another day of rest. Can you believe it?”
Despite this, she exclusively told Express.co.uk she wasn’t on top of her scans until she discovered a health app. “I went down my own health path yesterday, and I’ve missed my breast biopsy results, my histopathology results, and my back spine results before I realised I could go inside my health app and keep track. That really opened my eyes to how helpful technology can be ,” she said.
Their Libre technology helps people living with diabetes see their glucose numbers in real-time to help them make progress on their health goals after research found only 18% of UK adults say they feel completely up to speed with health tech, and 23% admit they are not using it to its full potential.
“Partnering with Abbott on the One Step Ahead campaign felt so important to me, I want to encourage people to be curious and not frightened of technology, because it can make such a positive difference to your health. I could do it from a personal experience and help people not be frightened of technology.
“I live with my almost 89-year-old mum, who is in remission from cancer and COPD. Now she can get her prescriptions on an app, and she thinks she rules the world because she’s starting to learn how to do these different things on her phone,” she laughed.
