For Catherine, Living a Public Life in a Public Body, Privacy is Illusory

To be clear, there is nothing private about having cancer. A diagnosis requires referrals and a bewildering number of scans and tests. There are ultrasounds, MRIs, PET scans; colonoscopies, bronchoscopies, endoscopies. There are needle biopsies, razor biopsies, or liquid biopsies. Most of the tests require getting naked, or mostly naked, beneath a robe, sometimes waiting in a large room full of other terrified strangers also in robes, before presenting oneself to strangers who push, jab, thread and insert tools into or onto body parts that are not normally explored. Frequently, these tests have to be repeated, or different tests ordered, to rule something out.

“I’ve been naked in front of so many people in my life at this point. You sort of lose some of that sense of, ‘My body is private,’” said Isabel Blumberg, who is my gynecologist. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019, Blumberg was the first person to call me. She told me that she’d had cancer, too.

In the video Kensington Palace released on Friday, Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed her cancer status after more than six weeks of silence and pleaded for privacy. “We hope that you will understand that, as a family, we now need some time, space and privacy while I complete my treatment,” she said while wringing her thin hands. A princess no doubt bypasses the waiting rooms and receives a level of medical care inaccessible to most. But she cannot evade the intrusions and indignities of cancer — the anxious waiting for pathology reports, the shock of the news, the series of treatment decisions that no young, healthy person has ever imagined having to make. The treatment can feel like a grueling, interminable invasion.

And because Catherine is a princess, the violations went further: the wild and incessant speculation about what had gone wrong with her body, the alleged unauthorized infiltrations of her medical files, which the London Clinic, where she underwent “major abdominal surgery,” is investigating. “There is no place at our hospital for those who intentionally breach the trust of any of our patients or colleagues,” Al Russell, the clinic’s CEO, said in a statement.

Even in health, privacy is difficult for a public figure to attain, and since she married Prince William in 2011, Kate Middleton has lived under a microscope. Her physical body — her legs, her hair, her behind, her clothing — has been scrutinized in the way of every female celebrity but also because of her royal function and role.