“Preventive chemo” is chemotherapy given to prevent the cancer from spreading to other sites in the body. It’s not given to treat the original tumor, but to kill any cancer cells that may have already traveled to other sites in the body via the lymphatic system. It’s also called adjuvant therapy.
My daughter had adjuvant chemotherapy after her breast cancer surgery even though all her sentinel lymph nodes were clear.
My oldest and I were just talking about this. She is a chemo nurse, so gave me some perspective on what might be happening.
It sounds like Catherine was having symptoms of some kind that necessitated exploratory surgery and perhaps removal of something (hysterectomy?). Maybe it wasn’t obvious that anything was cancerous at that time. Tissue would be sent away to be biopsied as a typical precaution. In the meantime, she is recovering from surgery and needed to wait until she was strong enough to undergo chemo. My daughter said chemo is often given as a follow up to make sure no cancerous cells remain.
On a personal note, it does take time to wrap your head around the diagnosis and tell your children. For that, I feel for her. My sister kept her cancer diagnosis very secret - only my immediate family and hers knew - and when she ultimately died everyone was surprised. She was not the future queen of England, but she was a private person who did not want ghoulish questions and those pitying stares from people. Maybe Catherine is the same way.
This is what she did say today. Which would likely rule out Whipple/known pancreatic cancer.
First of all, you’re assuming that they were telling the truth at the time. Secondly, it is possible that they saw something that they thought was precancerous, so did the Whipple, and then the path came back as malignant.
There are very few abdominal surgeries that would require a 2 week hospital stay, no matter how much home care you can afford. A Whipple is one of them.
No way this was a hysterectomy. They do that laparascopically and send you home the next day. I strongly suspect either a huge debulking surgery for something like ovarian cancer, or a Whipple.
My daughter the OB/GYN says this isn’t true. Some hysterectomies are still done as open procedures, typically when there’s an enlarged uterus (like if you naturally have a large uterus, if there are fibroids or if the uterus is enlarged due to multiple previous preganancies) or there is scarring from endometriosis or a previous c-section. It’s also done if there is a weak pelvic floor or a uterine prolapse. (Because they need to do a pelvic floor repair/reconstruction.) It’s also done if there is any suspicion of ovarian cancer,
Why? If she dies before she becomes queen, what is going to change for the ‘people’? They can’t elect another queen or pick another wife for William. It doesn’t change anything for the order of succession. It wouldn’t change anything even if William was the one who was sick, unless he died, and even then the ‘people’ couldn’t do anything to change anything.
Thirty years ago my chemo was considered adjuvant, even though there were cancerous cells in the lymph nodes. It hasn’t recurred, so I’m glad I had the treatments.
Our kids were 3,10, and 13 at the time and it was hard to figure out what to tell them, but we did so pretty quickly. Of course I was a stay at home mom so a sudden flurry of appointments was an obvious change to our routine.
Hoping all goes as smoothly as possible for the whole family.
But is that amount different if it is doled out amoung 10 people or 30 people? Does William get a different amount if he works 300 events per year or only 20? His father might have something to say about it but I don’t think the people do, or that he’d get less spending money or have to move out of a castle or two.
I think most of that goes to the castle upkeep, the staffs, security etc.
I just don’t think we, the people (or even the people actually paying) have any right to know about their personal lives.
While I imagine the “c” word has touched all of us in some shape or form or family or friend, I need to say, I’m sending lots of love and compassion for what some of you have been through.
She’s at 8+ years post treatment mark and is feeling pretty confident. Because her cancer was a genetic cancer (not BRCA1 or 2 but a different, very rare mutation), she also gets regular breast screening as well as screening for other types of cancer associated that mutation.
She was only 24 when diagnosed, wasn’t married and had no kids. But she was in her second year of med school. She managed to keep current with her classes and honored all her didactics that year despite undergoing 3 different types of chemo plus surgery. (No radiation possible due to the type of her mutation.) She took her STEP 1 the day after her had a breast reconstruction surgery–and scored high on it. D2 is a very tough kid…
She’s not a tough kid, she’s a warrior!
I’m taking this news pretty hard. My heart breaks for the difficult conversations that have already taken place, and the ones that will follow. I’m saddened for the part of childhood that’s forever changed. I know the desperate fear of possibly not seeing one’s children grow up.
I was 41 and my sons were 10 and 11. We waited til the bone marrow biopsy confirmed that the mutation was the one that was susceptible to treatment. Took about three weeks for that to come through. Didn’t tell my parents til we knew the biopsy results.
During that three weeks, I read a lot on talking about cancer with children. Got my tail into therapy to discuss same. Made a bucket list. Still have it. H and I spent a lot of time discussing The Talk. We were resolved to answer whatever questions they had honestly.
When you have kids who are curious and love science, you get interesting questions. Spent a lot of time talking about gene translocations and side effects of various meds. Told them about the daily injections and that I’d be tired a lot. Like their dad, they wanted facts. No one cried. The emotional questions came later, mostly from S2, though S1 always hung back and paid attention.
Now. they barely remember a time when I wasn’t dealing with the leukemia. And ten years later, the chemo I was on caused a cardiac arrest. Had S2 not been home, I wouldn’t be here. He performed the CPR that brought me back. That trauma damaged him for a long time. Therapy helped.
Twenty-two years later. I’m on my fourth chemo drug. Long-term effects are a fact of life. Cancer changed us all forever.
May Catherine have an easy time with treatment and be blessed with a full recovery. May the care with which she and her husband have raised their children serve to give them all the resilience and closeness to face whatever comes.
Excellent article. It touches on so elements that we’ve been grappling with here: her right to privacy vs. responsibility to disclose as a ‘working royal’, the abject failure of ‘The Firm’ to protect her, the role of social media, etc.
<Insert “Why not both?” meme here.>
I am an OB/GYN and can confirm your daughter’s comments, although many operations for ovarian CA are now done robotically or laparoscopically. The Princess’s cancer is more likely ovarian than pancreatic. The initial surgery would be a total hysterectomy (uterus, tubes, ovaries) with tumor debulking- not quite as aggressive as a Whipple procedure but still a long surgery that can include bowel resection along with other tissue removal. Chemo after the surgery is given to kill off intraperitoneal cancer cells too small to be seen and removed during surgery.
When my husband was diagnosed with Lymphoma, we didn’t share with our 17 year old daughter until he had the whole treatment plan in place. We didn’t want to scare her with unknowns. We only told a handful of friends and never told either set of parents. Luckily, he did well with chemo and has been in remission for a long time now. It was a luxury we had as people who can live private lives.
Good article. I am not sure what the palace or PR machine could have done differently. Especially if William and Kate requested no info being released. Perhaps The King was hoping that his disclosures would fill the gap for his daughter-in-law?
A friend of mine had stage III esophageal cancer, young, underwent surgery and chemo, and is now cancer free. So much has changed in the treatment of devastating cancer so I hope that will be the case for her. A lot to grapple with and be in the limelight.
There’s plenty the Royal Family could and should have done differently. In addition to the lying about Kate being fine via the doctored Mother’s day photo, even William carried on as if everything was business as usual, ‘move along: nothing to see here!’
For example, William attended this fluffy entertainment event on Feb. 19th:
That was a full month after her surgery. They knew perfectly well what her diagnosis was by then. (And on a side note: is this what your husband should be doing right after you’ve been Dxed with cancer and recovering from a major surgery?)
The fact that they pretended everything was just peachy while simultaneously refusing to provide ‘proof of life’ is what invited all the speculation and conspiracy theories. If they had just said, “Kate had a major surgery and has now had some complications and we ask for your privacy”, AND William had actually acted like a dad with three young kids whose wife was just Dxed with cancer, I think people would have respected that.
Instead, the fact that they acted as if everything was fine is precisely what gave license to the internet sleuths to start poking around, and now we all know about Rose Hanbury and how to pronounce “Cholmondeley”. The Firm has done her a terrible disservice with all their lying and obfuscation.
Whatever the Palace did wrong, I do not fault William for attending work events. I think he is amazingly supportive of Kate, but yet he does have other responsibilities. I know if it were me, I wouldn’t want my husband sitting across from me 24/7 as I would also have strong support from my family and friends.
While a spouse can be a great support during a crisis, sometimes you just want to be with your mother, sister or friends.
Even after they knew she had cancer, they let her take the blame for the photo. That is unforgivable imho as the editing scandal is what really took the conspiracies to the next level.
I saw those clips of William at that event and he had a manic energy that to me reads like someone who is just trying to fake his way though an obligation. I think he was trying to lay on the smiles to smooth things over, and that must have been awfully hard for him. I really feel sorry for them both. All ire from here on out goes to the men/women in grey, or basically the inept comms team.