Three great pieces of advice helped us get through a horrible situation

The summer before last, I was getting ready to leave my family on holiday in France while I came home to England. My children, who were seven and four, held on to me tightly, looking pale and serious. But they were too frightened to protest, the way they would have done if I’d been leaving them with a babysitter for the evening. We all knew there was something wrong with me, and I was heading off into the unknown.

About eight weeks earlier, my face had become swollen and puffy. Then my neck had followed, and eventually my whole upper body. I looked weird, I felt faint, I could hardly stay awake. I was 39.

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As Princess of Wales begins treatment after cancer diagnosis, we answer some key questions

The Princess of Wales has begun preventive chemotherapy after her doctors discovered she had cancer following major abdominal surgery in January. What is preventive chemotherapy and how effective can it be?

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Paddy Harverson said rumours had fed ‘permanent doom loop’ before Catherine’s cancer announcement

• What we know about the Princess of Wales’s cancer diagnosis

The pressure and speculation about the Princess of Wales’s health before she disclosed her cancer diagnosis was “the worst I’ve ever seen”, one of her former advisers has said.

Catherine, 42, said in a video message on Friday that she was having “preventative chemotherapy” after major abdominal surgery in January.

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Early diagnosis and better awareness mean tumours can be caught early – and when disease is found, under-45s can often tolerate chemotherapy better

Prof Andrew Beggs of Birmingham University runs a special clinic for young people with cancer and has noted, as have other experts, that more and more people under the age of 45 are being diagnosed with some form of the condition.

“There are a number of reasons for this rise,” he told the Observer . “For one thing, we are simply getting better at spotting cancer at earlier and earlier stages. In addition, special awareness is involved. Young people are much more perceptive about their health than previous generations and so they are more willing to seek help at an early stage when their symptoms have first appeared.”

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Royal fans hope that news of princess’s cancer diagnosis will end the online storm

There was no carpet of roses outside Windsor Castle yesterday, no bunches of daffodils blocking the entrance to Kensington Palace – just an occasional bouquet. The royal family wanted things to be business as usual after the Princess of Wales revealed her cancer diagnosis the day before, and the public has been keen to oblige.

Tourists watched the changing of the guard at Windsor, while visitors in London trooped into Kensington Palace to see the regalia of past monarchs, or posed outside for selfies.

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Kensington Palace says Catherine and Prince William are ‘extremely moved by the public’s warmth and support’

The Princess of Wales and her husband, Prince William, have been “enormously touched” by the messages of support received since she announced her cancer diagnosis , a Kensington Palace spokesperson has said.

Catherine said on Friday she was undergoing preventive chemotherapy after tests done following her major abdominal surgery in January revealed cancer had been present.

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Cancer was once unmentionable. But for the Princess of Wales, the new requirement for openness risks turning into ugly curiosity

It may be that privacy has always been a relative concept, but in an age when its gradations grow ever crazier, their management left almost entirely to the harried individual, some of us find ourselves longing for its old, more absolutist protections: for the silence of our grandparents; for the laconicism of our parents. On Friday, like so many other people, I watched a youngish woman – a mother, a daughter, a sister, a wife – talk about the illness for which she’s being treated , and in the midst of my sympathy, an alarm began to ring somewhere in my head.

Across the internet, I knew, people would be busy deleting their stupid, spiteful Facebook posts; in the cause of personal damage limitation, a few would shortly board Instagram in order to loud hail an apology – red-face emoji – for their part in the spiralling gossip and loopy conspiracy theories. And yet, I also knew her carefully beseeching statement wouldn’t really draw a line under anything. The word cancer is a beginning, not an end. Around the Princess of Wales, expectations are already quietly blooming, like the daffodils we saw behind her as she spoke.

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Catherine’s moving message revealing her treatment for cancer showed a candour that the monarchy has often lacked

The video recording in which Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed she is undergoing treatment for cancer will be remembered as a moving personal testament and a public profile in courage at a time of great challenges for the monarchy. Catherine’s demeanour was calm, her clothes and appearance ordinary, her voice steady, although the strain showed behind her eyes. Yet most of all, it was Catherine’s bravery that shone through as she described the “incredibly tough” two months that she, her husband and children have endured since her illness, so shocking and unexpected, was first diagnosed.

All those people across Britain who are afflicted by cancer – the total is about 3 million , with about 1,000 new diagnoses each day – and relatives and friends whose lives are upended by the disease will identify closely with the feelings Catherine expressed or intimated. Fear for the future, present pain, the often distressing side effects of modern treatments, worry about the impact on the children: such thoughts besiege and oppress the mind even as the body struggles. Catherine spoke vicariously for all who suffer.

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Like Kate, parents with the disease face a big decision - how and when to tell the children

Think about how shocked you felt by the Princess of Wales’s cancer news on Friday, multiply that by a thousand, and you go some way to knowing how it feels to get a diagnosis. Even if you’ve rehearsed hearing bad news while you wait for test results, you cannot be prepared for being told you have the disease.

When I got my breast cancer diagnosis in the summer of 2022 I was stunned. I hadn’t imagined that I would be leaving the hospital and having to tell my family and friends that I was ill. I hadn’t rehearsed those conversations in my head.

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