Earlier this week Kate Middleton, Britain’s princess of Wales, released a video announcing that she had completed her chemotherapy treatment for cancer. The video, which features Middleton walking through a wheat field in slow motion and captures intimate family moments with husband Prince William and their three young children, was widely shared.
Largely positively received, it has drawn criticism, however, with some commentators positing that the video was not, and could not be, an accurate reflection of most people’s cancer experience.
Middleton released a very different video in March when, sitting alone on a bench, she revealed she was undergoing treatment for cancer and told others with the disease “you are not alone”.
Referring to the latest video, Edel Brannigan, a cancer nurse with the Irish Cancer Society says: “as Kate Middleton herself says in her video ‘the cancer journey is complex and unpredictable for everyone’.” Brannigan believes Middleton’s video will have helped many people “by sharing her story and raising awareness about cancer”.
She says: “Life after cancer looks different for everybody.”
We spoke to some people in Ireland, who have been affected by cancer, to hear their thoughts.
Deirdre Geoghegan (42) from Dublin, was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 39. “I was very into my fitness and I was eating healthy and I was exercising. I lost a bit of weight and I saw a lump in my left breast,” she says. With no family history and being the fittest she had ever been, she was shocked by the cancer diagnosis that followed.
Geoghegan underwent an aggressive course of chemotherapy. Her children were six and three when she was diagnosed. “My son is autistic, so I was doubly worried about leaving,” she says. Her young son found his mother’s hair loss, following treatment, difficult “because it was a change and mummy was different. Change is really hard for him”. She found wearing a wig on the school run made things easier in that regard.
Geoghan has a “very good prognosis”, she says. But putting the experience behind her has not proved easy. Cancer “robs you of your [certainty] ... you’ll get to old age ... There’s always that tinge of worry in most things you do.” She finds Middleton’s video helpful, saying: “It’s showing people what everyone goes through, whether you’re a common Joe Soap or whether you’re a member of the royal family. It’s the vulnerability and a new perspective.”
The after effects linger, she says. Not just the physical ones like the “medical menopause”, that followed, but the fear around colds or any pains. “Unfortunately, I’ve met a couple of people who haven’t made it out the other side.”
Geoghegan thought the video was “nice” and believes people who have been through cancer treatment “could be a bit more sympathetic” to Middleton than some of those who have criticised her, adding “it’s not all sunshine and lollipops”.
Outward appearances can be deceptive, Geoghegan cautions. “A lot of people didn’t know I had cancer and I wore make up. And I wear bright lipstick,” she says. “I suppose as a mother you’re trying to keep up the appearance for your children. And in the royal family, she’s trying to keep up the appearance for [her] nation, not to worry people.”
Siobhán O’Connell lives in Newry, Co Down. Her 50-year-old husband Eugene has oesophageal cancer. He had surgery eight weeks ago, but his recovery has been slower than expected. He needs to start chemotherapy again in two weeks time, O’Connell says. The couple had four children. One son died from a heart defect.
It is hard for O’Connell to watch her husband struggle but he has a “brilliant attitude”, she says. “There’s a lot tied up with food and eating. You don’t realise how much food plays a massive part in everything you do. You go out for food for birthdays, for celebrations, for everything. While he’s eating a little bit at the moment, he had most of his stomach removed.” It’s challenging, she says.
There is a constant battle to prevent Eugene from losing weight. O’Connell pays close attention to the calorie content of her husband’s food and he’s on a supplementary liquid feed. “It’s very much a threat hanging over you – ‘if you don’t maintain your weight, this tube will stay in for longer’”. Eating will never return to normal for him, she says.
O’Connell thinks Middleton’s video was beautiful. “It was very poignant, I felt. It was very different from the first video. The first video was very raw and I felt this one was obviously carefully created to try and put across a message.”
However, O’Connell acknowledges the video does not reflect her own family’s experience. “I’m putting Eugene’s socks on, that’s what cancer looks like. I’m standing in the supermarket scouring ingredients to see if I can get the highest level of calories and to see what else might interest him when he’s not hungry ... he would love a steak. He can’t have a steak.
“We had two lovely weeks in June where he was free from the effects of chemo and before he went into surgery. And we did coffee shops, did garden centres. But no, it’s not our image of cancer. It’s been much tougher than that.”
But O’Connell says she understands why Middleton might choose not to share the bad days. “Why would she share the days where she doesn’t get off the sofa? She’s in a people-facing role. She does not have that opportunity to hide away, whereas we’ve been able to hunker down and try and ride through it with support from family, but with no pressure from the outside world.
“I wouldn’t wish that on anybody – trying to cope with an illness in the public eye.” The hope Middleton offered, however, will help, O’Connell says. “We have to hold on to hope.”
Twenty-six-year old Lora Doyle, from Arklow, Co Wicklow was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma when she was 15.
Doyle found a lump on her collarbone that was the size of a golf ball. “I found myself falling asleep in class and I would come home at four o’clock, straight upstairs and I would fall asleep for hours.” Her parents thought this was part of being a teenager, but she began to experience intense pain where the lump was.
On Christmas Day Doyle showed the lump to an aunt, who was retired GP, who told her mother she needed to see a doctor immediately. She says the shock when she discovered she had cancer was like nothing she had experienced before, and it took a while for the news to sink in.
Knowing there was a possibility she could die traumatised her. “It was like a truck hit me.”
Doyle did two rounds of chemotherapy and was very ill afterwards some days. “I lost every hair on my head. I couldn’t go to school and I missed the Junior Cert.” She also gained a lot of weight from the medication. Even after getting the all-clear, Doyle struggled. “I didn’t feel healthy again for two or three years afterwards. My body was on the floor, I had no energy. I was incredibly weak all the time.”
Mentally, Doyle has found the recovery more difficult. “It’s been 11 years now and I’m still going through it. I still go to counselling,” she says. “I had really bad PTSD from it.
“My hair was everything. It was my crown,” she says, describing some of the effects of the physical changes cancer and its treatment can bring. She took its loss badly and even to this day it affects her, as her hair didn’t grow back in the same way. “I struggled with that for years because I would look in the mirror and I would just see a really thin head of hair and a bald patch. And it was a constant daily reminder of what happened.”
Doyle says the negativity towards Middleton’s video is unfair. “The public scrutiny that she faces is not like any other celebrity ... we don’t know what treatment she had. We don’t know what drugs were in her chemotherapy. Not everyone loses their hair or goes on steroids and gains weight and fluctuates. I think it’s unfair for people to shame her for not looking how they would perceive a cancer survivor to look.”
Like Middleton, Doyle says her perspective has changed: “My motto is that I just don’t believe in stress.”
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