The Royal We

Kate Middleton's cancer diagnosis and all the words I didn't need to write

Four days ago the world learned that Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, a wife, a mother to three, and a public figure to too many— had been given a cancer diagnosis and had begun preventative chemotherapy treatments.

After much intense, arbitrary, and salacious rumoring, the actual truth was neither worse nor any better— but it was a good opportunity for everyone to learn how to properly fit their foot into their mouths. I myself am guilty of firing from the hip, peppering group chats with a couple conspiratorial asides to play along.

But as a newsletter about cancer, it has been the closest thing to a “stop the presses” moment in this publication’s three month history. Drafts were quickly shelved for a later date— the Princess of Wales’ diagnosis surely needed commentary.

Immediate thoughts went to privacy, into the ways that one handles the news of their diagnosis. At the way that everyone is entitled to debut their diagnosis in a scope and manner that they and they alone should get to decide. I thought about drawing the parallel to my own diagnosis and how I waited five months and an entire regimen before I “went public” with it.

Or maybe the angle was to examine the way cancer tends to lift basic humanity into a mythic status, despite its increasingly routine presence in our lives. And with the history of Britain’s princesses each being shrouded in their own tragedy, it’s too easy to say that this is Kate’s.

But two paragraphs later and I realize that I am just another speculator, churning the gristle at the content mill, stretching bad news into a longer news cycle.

Though before trashing the draft completely, I did go back and watch her video one last time.

In it, whether carefully crafted writing or genuine empathy (I’m buying both), I appreciated that Middleton ended on a note of solidarity— expressing her own support for cancer patients everywhere who were going through a similar experience.

Public figures do this all the time. I’m not saying this as a cynical jab at speech writing, but in the sense that sometimes everyone has to be reminded that they and we are all human. And nothing reinforces this more than a cancer diagnosis.

Maybe that’s why everyone got so quiet so fast. It wasn’t just the fact that they (and we) had been speaking ill of someone going through such a difficult time, but it was also a reminder that any day, anyone could wake up to the same bad news. But no one would ever have to do it under the same scrutiny that she did.

I may not know what it’s like to be British Royalty (they would never), but in one short moment, myself and thousands of other cancer patients got a whole lot closer to a shining public figure. Not to taste fame, but to extend earned condolences.

Much like his honor Mr. Kevin Bacon, there is a web of individuals connected by diagnosis, nausea, and consonant-heavy chemotherapies who can play a game of six-degrees of separation— and now, to our mournful surprise, we raise gentle hands to welcome Kate Middleton into our club.

It is undeniably powerful. And perhaps worth a couple words of acknowledgement. Because so much about cancer and cancer research is about “raising awareness”, that at times it can feel like circular logic, shouting from the rooftops about raising awareness for this disease that everybody knows about.

I know I’m being obtuse on the underlying principles of detection and prevention, but that C word was heard around the world and was instantly known— in fact, its reputation may have eclipsed the Princess herself.

But as we know, representation matters. And for all of the words that don’t need to be said or written or speculated on— there is now someone who everyone has an opinion on, who can now speak for so many.

Our lives are often ordered and segmented by labels and groupings, the obvious divide here being between the healthy and the sick. So I come back to the semi-silence that settled when Middleton let her truth be known. In our world of us and them, in the kind of upstairs-downstairs dramas like Downton Abbey, it is a powerful reminder of the balancing hand of illness— and a unifying call for how we should treat those who are affected.

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Sensory Activation: Things I Was Into This Week

“Long Way Home”, Myriam Gendron

A lovely song that immediately took me somewhere far from my desk when I heard it. It’s one of those effortless, beautiful songs that I feel like I’ve known my whole life.

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