In January, Artem Chigvintsev left the Dancing with the Stars 2022 tour due to an unexpected illness.
The illness was COVID-19 and that was only the start.
COVID turned into pneumonia and Artem ended up suffering through pneumonia for almost a full month.
While he checked in on social media once and his fiance Nikki Bella gave updates as well, fans remained concerned at how long the pneumonia lasted.
On Monday, Artem had some great news for his fans.
Artem is finally pneumonia free
Artem Chigvintsev, 39, has finally got all the pneumonia out of his lungs and he has now revealed he is returning to the Dancing with the Stars Live! Tour.
Last week, PEOPLE confirmed from Artem’s fiance, Nikki Bella, that he was finally over the pneumonia that had kept him down for almost four weeks.
“He just got word from his doctor yesterday,” Nikki said. “His scans came back and he’s cleared. His lungs are officially cleared. We’re so happy because his last scan they weren’t seeing a lot of hope. They were talking about him being on an inhaler the rest of his life and all these different things.”
That led to the news that he is not only back on his feet and healthy again, but he is now going back on tour with DWTS.
Artem was working with Bachelorette alum Kaitlyn Bristowe, who won the Mirrorball trophy in Season 29 with him. They were touring with Season 30 winner Iman Shumpert as well as country music star Jimmie Allen and talk show host Amanda Kloots, both from Season 30 as well.
Artem will now rejoin fellow pros Brandon Armstrong, Alan Bersten, Sasha Farber, Daniella Karagach, Pasha Pashkov, Gleb Savchenko, Emma Slater, Britt Stewart, and Sofia Ghavami on the tour.
Artem’s road back to health
The news broke on January 21 that Artem had to pull out of the DWTS tour for “unexpected health issues.”
“My time on tour so far has been wonderful,” Artem wrote at the time. “Unfortunately I am having to step away from tour for a while, due to some unexpected health issues. My goal is to recover as quickly as possible so I can rejoin my cast and crew on this incredible tour.”
One week later, DWTS fans learned that it was COVID-19, as many expected, but that it ended up being much worse.
Nikki Bella’s sister, Brie Bella, said that it was “something more than COVID,” making it sound like his illness was worse than expected.
On February 5, Artem checked in with his fans and revealed he had pneumonia. This was over two weeks after he originally left the tour sick.
“Hi everyone, just wanted to give you a little update on my wellbeing,” Artem, 39, shared in a video. “So, I had another x-ray done yesterday, and it came back still positive for pneumonia, so I just got another set of antibiotics.”
A week later, Nikki Bella was at the Super Bowl for a red carpet event and said that Artem was still down with pneumonia and doctors were fighting to help him beat it.
“He still has pneumonia. Monday or Tuesday we’ll get [another] update,” Bella said. “He gets his lungs rescanned and we’ll find out if they’re better. The swellings gone down so, fingers crossed. We’re praying really hard that we get good news.”
On February 21, exactly one month after Artem left the DWTS tour with his illness, he finally kicked the pneumonia and is ready to get back on the road.
Dancing with the Stars is on hiatus. The dancing reality competition series should return to ABC in late 2022.