Dancing on Ice contestant Roxy Shahidi managed to dislocate her rib while training with professional partner Sylvain Longchambon last year.
Famous among soap lovers for portraying Emmerdale's Leyla Harding, the actress spoke to The Sun ahead of this weekend's launch episode, which will reunite Holly Willoughby and Stephen Mulhern as presenters.
"I felt very sorry for myself," Shahidi said of her awkward injury. "I didn't even know that was a thing. It was hard to breathe. If I coughed or sneezed it was agony. Absolute spasms.
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"But over the course of about three weeks it got better and over Christmas, it's really rested. And all I've got left is like a lump where it's kind of come out, which is scar tissue, so I've just got to be careful with it and if I feel it again, get strapped up."
Apparently, due to repeated compression in skating lifts, "the muscles kind of tighten up and it slowly ekes out".
It seems the after-effects really took Shahidi by surprise, as she went on to tell the publication: "I was sat in the car, dropping my daughter off at school. I sneezed and like, all of my body went into spasm, I've never felt pain like it. And I literally, like, I couldn't breathe for it felt like 10 minutes.
"I could barely open the car door, it took me about 10 minutes to get out of the car."
Related: First look at Emmerdale's Roxy Shahidi during Dancing on Ice training
This caused the actress to seek out medical advice from a Dancing on Ice physio named Sharon.
"She's given me exercises to work on strengthening and stretching exercises that I've been doing every day and it certainly feels a lot better," noted Shahidi.
"But once that's happened there is always that anxiety, that it's going to happen again, because the lifts are just going to get bigger and bigger as you go on."
Dancing on Ice airs on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.
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Reporter, Digital Spy
Dan is a freelance entertainment journalist. Beginning his writing career in 2014, Dan's work first graced the pages of cult publications Starburst magazine and Little White Lies before moving onto Total Film, Digital Spy, NME and Yahoo Entertainment.
In the film and TV universe, he kneels at the altar of Jim Carrey, Daniel Plainview, Mike Ehrmantraut and Paulie Walnuts.
