What’s It Like Being Told You Have Cancer?

(Originally written for Mail Online in March 2024)

No-one understands what it is like to be told you have cancer, unless they’ve had the disease themselves.

The Princess of Wales, poised and stoic in her Friday video announcement revealing her diagnosis, gave no indication of the many things she is likely to be feeling, the fears she is dealing with, the thoughts that keep her awake in the middle of the night.

Her priority is not only going to be her health, but the emotional wellbeing of her three young children, ensuring they know only what they absolutely need to, with all the positive spin she can muster: Mummy will be OK.

When, in 2014, I was diagnosed aged 46 with malignant melanoma — a particularly aggressive form of skin cancer that couldn’t simply be scraped away and forgotten, but the type that required surgery and biopsies of nearby lymph nodes, six-monthly check-ups and recurring worries about my surgeon’s warning that ‘melanomas have a habit of returning’ – my children seemed surprisingly unbothered.

At 10, 11, and 14, they weren’t too young to understand, but we also only told them what we had to. The necessities — told with a smile.

My husband and I explained why I’d be undergoing surgeries and spending time in bed, why I wouldn’t necessarily be available for them in the way I had been, whilst also ensuring they knew that I was going to be fine.

Of course, I didn’t know I was going to be fine. But I needed the children to believe that I would be, just as Kate will need her children to believe that, too — as much for her as for them.

Indeed, I firmly believe that life is where you look; that if you seek the good, you will undoubtedly find it. In that vein, Kate’s message of hope — reassuring us that she is ‘well’ and ‘getting stronger’ — takes on a more poignant and powerful resonance.

At a time when I could have plunged into despair – and I certainly had my moments – my diagnosis taught me that we are largely powerless to what life throws at us. Where our power comes in is how we choose to deal with those curveballs.