Of all the engagements Kate Middleton will undertake during her royal career, today’s will arguably be among the most challenging. This afternoon, the Princess of Wales visited The Christie NHS Foundation Trust—one of Europe’s leading cancer centres, which cares for more than 60,000 patients each year—in Greater Manchester to meet staff and patients currently undergoing chemotherapy, including those being treated in its young adult unit.
Photo: Getty Images
The Princess understands the experience more than most. It wasn’t so long ago that she revealed she was undergoing a course of preventive chemotherapy following planned abdominal surgery in January 2024, after which cancer was discovered. “This of course came as a huge shock, and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family,” she said in a video released in March 2024, not long after it was disclosed that King Charles III, too, had been diagnosed.
The following September, she shared the news that she had completed chemotherapy. “The last nine months have been incredibly tough for us as a family,” she said in another moving video, which showed her enjoying the outdoors with Prince William and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. She added that “life as you know it can change in an instant.”
Photo: Getty Images
