Buckingham Palace has managed to thread a particularly delicate needle over the course of 2024. They announced King Charles’s cancer in February, just after his hospitalization for a prostate procedure. They never confirmed what kind of cancer he has, although it’s widely rumored to be bladder cancer. They’ve never hidden the fact that Charles has to be in London mid-week, every week, for his cancer treatment, but they have never made it sound like anything more than a necessary addition to his already-busy schedule. They even sent him to France, Australia and Samoa this year and he managed to get through all of it. I even think his color has improved in recent weeks, despite the near-constant briefings from Kensington Palace that Charles is at death’s door. All in all, BP has managed this year pretty well, from what I can see. And they’ll have to do the same next year, because Charles’s cancer treatments will still be ongoing in 2025.
King Charles will continue to need cancer treatment in 2025, it was revealed today. A Buckingham Palace source has said the 76-year-old’s health is still being ‘managed’ but is ‘moving in a positive direction’.
His Majesty intends to return to a full programme of public duties next year. This will include ‘exciting’ UK and international visits in the first half of 2025, the insider said.
‘His treatment has been moving in a positive direction, as a managed condition the treatment cycle will continue into the new year’, the Palace source said.
Charles hosted members of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace for a pre-Christmas lunch yesterday. Today the King and Queen will hold their last public event of the year as they attend a reception at Waltham Forest Town Hall in East London. Royal aides said this would ‘celebrate the strong sense of community cohesion in the borough, highlighted by peaceful counter-protests in August 2024 following disorder in other parts of the UK’.
Charles has increased his engagements recently, including a visit to Apple’s London HQ and a meeting with CEO Tim Cook.
‘You could almost forget at the start of the year this was a man that faced the shock of being diagnosed with cancer’, a source said to Sky News.
Next year, the big tell on Charles’s health will be the travel plans. He’s managed his schedule in the second half of this year, to the point where he’s being seen publicly on a weekly basis and he’s managing his “duties.” But if his weekly treatments continue well into 2025, I doubt that he and Camilla will actually travel at all. Camilla got knocked on her ass during and after the Australian trip and she clearly does not want to travel anymore. Charles clearly wants to travel more, but his doctors and courtiers might tell him that he simply can’t do it anymore. I also wonder if there will be pressure, as the one-year-mark on his cancer diagnosis comes up, to actually speak about what kind of cancer he has and what his treatments entail.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- King Charles III waves to well wishers during a visit to St Peter’s Church in Notting Hill, London, to meet and thank DEC staff, aid workers and volunteers. The Church has supported the Middle East Humanitarian cause through Tearfund, a DEC member charity Featuring: King Charles III Where: London, United Kingdom When: 04 Dec 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III and chief executive of Apple, Tim Cook, meet staff and young people from the King’s Trust who are being supported by Apple, during a tour the firm’s UK Headquarters at Battersea Power Station Featuring: King Charles III Where: London, United Kingdom When: 12 Dec 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III attends The King’s Foundation’s annual Crafts at Christmas event at Highgrove Gardens Featuring: King Charles III Where: Tetbury, United Kingdom When: 13 Dec 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III attends The King’s Foundation’s annual Crafts at Christmas event at Highgrove Gardens Featuring: King Charles III Where: Tetbury, United Kingdom When: 13 Dec 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III attends The King’s Foundation’s annual Crafts at Christmas event at Highgrove Gardens Featuring: King Charles III Where: Tetbury, United Kingdom When: 13 Dec 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III attends The King’s Foundation’s annual Crafts at Christmas event at Highgrove Gardens Featuring: King Charles III Where: Tetbury, United Kingdom When: 13 Dec 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III speaks with students as he sees the work they have produced and hears more about their experiences of studying during The King’s Foundation’s annual Crafts at Christmas event at Highgrove Gardens Featuring: King Charles III Where: Tetbury, United Kingdom When: 13 Dec 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
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- King Charles III and his private secretary Sir Clive Alderton arriving for the King’s Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace Featuring: King Charles III and his private secretary Sir Clive Alderton Where: London, United Kingdom When: 19 Dec 2024 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
It’s time for Charles to fully disclose his diagnosis and treatment. He’s the Head of State after all. I think what the Palace really means is Charles has finished chemo and will be starting radiation in the new year.
100% and Kate too. Why the need for secrecy about the type of cancer when they’ve already revealed they have the disease. Great opportunity to draw attention to it and make people aware,
I guess I took the ‘being managed’ phrase to mean whatever kind of cancer he’s got, it’s incurable, but it can & is being held at bay with some kind of chemo, likely in pill form or weekly infusions. Or something. Or it’s a super serious kind of cancer that showed up in other places & is just darn difficult to treat. The latter is what my former boss is currently going through. Lung cancer that also showed up in the brain. Surprised diagnosis in January 2023, still undergoing treatments.
If it is bladder cancer there is no recovery, only management. What an excruciating way to go. I had a beloved dog get bladder cancer and luckily we are able to euthanize our pets. He should be spending this time with those he loves. I have nothing snarky to say this disease is punishment enough.
That’s interesting. With the headline it made me think of my friends brother who has two brain tumours, most of the big one was removed through surgery and now it’s chemo and treatment to manage them for a as long as possible. Not saying Charles has brain tumours but the ongoing treatment doesn’t bode well for him.
I’m sure you didn’t mean it this way, but this comment is extremely discouraging to anyone who might be going through bladder cancer treatment and is blatantly untrue. While bladder cancer is one of the tougher cancers out there, it is survivable. My grandfather went through chemo and bladder removal surgery in the 90s and won his battle with bladder cancer. He lived 25 more years before dying of old age. Bladder cancer is not a death sentence, and I encourage anyone going through treatment to keep fighting!!
Thank you Cecil! My fil has bladder cancer and his treatment has been very very effective. It is curable and not just manageable.
There are several types of bladder cancer – one is curable with regular chemo “rinses”, others are not. Mine is a rare type that quickly metastasized to other organs. Everything had to come out and I had a colon resectioning which means I rely on a bag to pass urine. I have been told that my chemo, which has been ongoing for 6 months and will continue into the new year, can control the cancer but I will never go into remission, and it will get me in the end, be it 2 years, 5 years, whatever. In my case bladder cancer is a death sentence.
SendIng you light and love, @Jaded.
Ah, @Jaded, I wish you all the very best. You’re up in BC, right? What a lovely place to be and I hope you find the small joys in everyday life whenever you’re able.
Sending you hugs, Jaded.
I’ve been so confused and also deeply concerned about the CBers posting about family members with bladder cancer.
My fil has bladder cancer. He was cancer free at one point but it came back almost immediately. Everyone in the family is acting as though it’s same old and he’s fine.
So I thought it was tough but totally manageable. They actually use TB to treat it which is wild. To see so many horrific reports is so concerning.
We will not “know” what kind of cancer until after he passes, just like Lizzie’s. IMO, I think he thought it was bad enough that he had to admit to prostate “issues”; *no*way* he wants to be known as the “Incontinent King” due to bladder cancer, he’s MUCH too vain to admit it.
My friend’s father held out 3 yrs. with that diagnosis. It wasn’t until the last 9 mos. or so that he got so weak he had to be carried to and from bed to sit up in a chair with family, and was on a constant pain drip. Time will tell with Charles.
As of now, there’s an Italy trip planned. Which would be a much shorter flight. So we’ll see.
I wonder if his diagnosis is terminal and the requirement for continuous weekly chemotherapy is a management protocol rather than a “cure”. I just don’t believe the palace about his real condition.
I agree with your speculation. I knew a lovely person that found out about a cancer via sheer happenstance when it was already stage 4 and had metastasized to the point of being terminal. Her doctors were able to provide care that managed it, and other than attending ongoing treatments she lived a very normal daily life and continued working for more than five years. Only in the last six months or so of her life was there a precipitous decline.
If he were at all human and can still work he would visit the sussexes and his Sussex grandchildren. And restore frogmore to the sussexes and give them security
At the very least, I would think he would guarantee the Sussexes’ safety to visit him. Does he really want to exit this life with his grandchildren having no memory of him?
Charles is a malignant narcissist. His grandchildren can’t offer him anything so therefore he is completely uninterested in them. I’m always surprised by people’s shock but then remember not everyone was raised by and in a narcissist family system.
They don’t care about anyone but themselves and how others affect how they are perceived. That’s it.
Well, my dad was a real SOB pretty much his whole life, and being old & ill didn’t change any of that. And then he died.
It sounds like KC has a chronic form of cancer, but he’s found a stable treatment for it at the moment. My inlaws both have cancer–my MIL is stable and has been for a while. My FIL is not.
Whatever cancer he has is obviously terminal at this point.. he wont be getting better. He has the P-B family to comfort him for what is probably his last Christmas.
It’s wild to me that this nearly 80 year old man with cancer, receiving treatment, is still attending so many events while his younger and presumably healthier family members (Camilla, Kate) cancel or avoid event appearances all the time for health reasons. Surely if he can do it, they can?
So true! I mean, he is king. But if Kate can say she doesn’t want to do something because of her “cancer”, which she has already “recovered from”- it’s crazy that Charles doesn’t harp on about it as much or use it as an excuse.