King Charles III. has been diagnosed with a form of cancer, Buckingham Palace announced. According to the information, the King’s treatment began already on Monday. 75-year-old Charles was treated for prostate enlargement last month, and during this treatment the cancerous lesion was discovered – writes the BBC.
The type of cancer was not disclosed, but it was confirmed that it was not prostate cancer. According to a statement from the palace, the king began the treatments on Monday.
The court’s information states that the doctors noticed a different type of worrying problem during the hospital treatment of the benign prostate lesion, and a form of cancer was identified during the diagnostic tests carried out afterwards. According to the palace, the King approaches the treatment in a completely positive way and wants to return to the full performance of his public duties as soon as possible. His doctors have recommended that he postpone his public programs for the duration of his treatment, but the monarch will also attend to his state duties and official documentation activities during this period, according to a statement from Buckingham Palace on Monday evening.
The latter communication is of particular constitutional importance, as it reveals that the King has not become incapacitated, so there is no need for the head of state’s duties to be taken over by a body of state councilors made up of his immediate relatives in the capacity of regent.
According to Buckingham Palace, Charles himself decided to make the diagnosis public in order to prevent speculation.
Even with the presentation of the previous diagnosis of the monarch’s prostate changes, the court broke with the long-standing customary law, according to which no details about the state of health and possible illnesses of high-ranking members of the British royal family were previously disclosed beyond the necessary minimum. According to officials, it was also the King’s wish to make the diagnosis of prostate changes public, with the aim of drawing public attention to the importance of timely examinations and screenings.
The strict secrecy applied in previous decades was illustrated by the fact that in the case of Charles’s grandmother, it was only seven years after her death, in 2009, that it was officially revealed about Queen Elizabeth’s mother, Queen Mother Elizabeth, who died in 2002 at the age of 102, that she underwent surgery and treatment for colon cancer 43 years earlier, in 1966. However, the relaxation of the strictness of secrecy does not extend to all members of the royal family. A few days before the King’s treatment, Princess Catherine of Cambridge, wife of the heir to the throne William, daughter-in-law of the ruler, underwent abdominal surgery in the same hospital, but in her case the court did not say what kind of illness it was. The 42-year-old Catherine spent almost two weeks in the London Clinic, a private hospital in London, which she left on January 29th, and is currently recovering at her home in Windsor.
According to the palace, based on the medical opinion, it is unlikely that the princess will be able to return to her public duties before the period after Easter. According to consistent British press reports citing court officials, Catherine did not have cancer.
King Charles III. ascended the throne of the United Kingdom at the moment of Queen Elizabeth’s death, on September 8th, 2022. The Queen died in the 97th year of her life, in the 71st year of her reign, at her summer residence, Balmoral Castle in Scotland.
BBC
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