Kate Middleton’s youngest is 5, and our daughter, also Kate, was 6, when I was diagnosed with cancer. We told her, and my world, almost immediately. Why?
Why not? Partly, it was me, I’ve been upfront about most things, perhaps too many things! Still, I couldn’t accept that so many saw having cancer, particularly one involving the word “breast”, as shameful. Screw that. Also, there was reality, my hair was going to fall out from chemo, the treatment was going to take a year, and I was not going to lie and hide.
Another big part, of course, was that I didn’t have a choice. I’m not a princess (they say!), but I was a very public person. I knew someone could identify me at the hospital, someone might leak my treatment, somehow it would get out that I had cancer. I knew you had to feed the Beast, or it would come back for more. Now Kate has told us she has cancer. She is not dead, not getting a divorce or any of the other conspiracy theories thrown around during the feeding frenzy of speculation.
I’m hardly a monarchist, but if being Cancer Girl was tough for me, imagine what it’s been like for a real princess. Kate’s husband has reason to hate the press, his mother was chased to her death by paparazzi. And now it’s worse, there is social media. For every public person, even every princess, to reveal or not, and when, has to be an individual choice. Particularly when something as personal as children is involved. It’s hard to remember with the palaces and all, but Kate Middleton is a human, and cancer itself is an intrusion.
It was just a month ago that Kate started chemo, and she took the time to get her shit together and tell her children. Now she has gone public. She had to know that if you don’t come forward, people will just make stuff up to fill the gap. I’m not sure keeping her diagnosis private for that long was good public relations, but it was her decision to make.
For me, other than figuring out how to stay alive, we had to tell our daughter, our Kate. Her paediatrician advised telling her that I was going to live, until, unless, we knew that wasn’t true. Thank god we did not have to go there. So we told her. Straight, no whispering, no secret talks upstairs. We may however have stressed that everybody had cancer, it was no big deal! Her Kindergarten and Grade One teachers both had it, the neighbours on all 3 sides had been exposed to it. Kate probably smelled that rat, still, we carried on.
I lived in denial, convinced the cancer would not kill me, and denial has worked. So far. But I had to live through it publicly. Again. My first marriage, my divorce, my second (and last!) marriage, and my pregnancy, were all fodder for the Beast. Then cancer was thrown onto the pile. My public cancer would have been very different if I thought it was going to kill me. I hope neither Kate nor I ever have to figure that out.
But here’s the other reason her cancer has me thinking. Cancer is a problem we are not addressing. I am naively hoping people might pay more attention now that a princess in her 40s has gone public.
When I was diagnosed, also in my 40s, CBC Marketplace wanted me to do a cancer tell-all. I was shocked by all the people I saw getting treatment, thousands of them at one hospital. I learned that cancer was not only common but gaining ground. I agreed to do a story, and called it “Chasing the Cancer Answer”.
It was not about “Why me?”. I thought, “Why not me?”, was a better question. If people cared about my cancer, I might as well apply some journalism, spread the word about prevention, and how lame we all are. The threat of death and living through it in public had to have some positives. Not much has changed, except that now the Canadian Cancer Society states that “all forms of asbestos cause cancer”. Hold my beer.
In the Globe piece announcing Kate’s cancer, there was a quote from Dr. Shivan Sivakumar, associate professor in oncology at the University of Birmingham. He says, “There is an epidemic currently of young people getting cancer, under 50’s. It is unknown the cause of this, but we are seeing more patients getting abdominal cancers”.
When I first did my Marketplace doc, the odds of getting cancer in a lifetime were “two in five”. I found that shocking, today it seems everyone says the odds are simply “one in two” and no one bats an eye. Let’s hope we get more answers about the causes of cancer before Kate Middleton dies of old age. In the meantime, dignity may be possible, but I’m afraid privacy for public people, especially for princesses, is not.
After all this talk about cancer, it seems odd to hit you up! And to promote this week’s podcast with the directors of “Carol Doda, Topless at the Condor”. Still, they are both good causes even if they don’t save people from cancer. We loved talking boobs, revolutionary as opposed to cancerous ones, and we’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast. We’d love it even more if you paid to subscribe, it’s only 5 bucks a month. A bargoon! Click here for this week’s podcast!
Well Said - I am happy that you spoke out about the treatment that Kate Middleton has received from the public and the press. I am far from being a monarchist but I am a human being and so is Kate.