‘A huge shock’: Catherine, Princess of Wales, announces she has most cancers

This is CNN breaking news. Good afternoon. We're coming to you with breaking news from Kensington Palace regarding Catherine, the Princess of Wales. I want to go straight to CNN's Max Foster in London. Max, what are you learning.

I've just been informed that the Princess of Wales has been diagnosed with cancer. It was discovered after she went into surgery in January. The tests that was carried out in that surgery revealed to cancer. We're not going to be told.

What type of cancer it is, but I'm going to take herself speak to you in her words, I want to take this opportunity to say thank you personally for all the wonderful messages of support and for your understanding whilst I be recovering from surgery. It has been an incredibly tough.

Couple of months for my entire family. But I've had a fantastic medical team who've taken great care of me, for which I'm so grateful. In January, I underwent major abdominal surgery in London. And at the time, it was thought that my condition.

Was non-cancerous. The surgery was successful. However, tests after the operation had cancer had been present. My medical team therefore advised that I should undergo a course of preventative chemotherapy, and I'm.

Now in the early stages of that treatment. This, of course, came as a huge shock, and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately. For the sake of our young family, as you can imagine, this has taken time.

It has taken me time to recover from major surgery in order to start my treatment. But most importantly, it has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that's appropriate for them and to reassure them.

That I'm going to be okay as I've said to them, I am well, I'm getting stronger every day by focusing on the things that will help me heal in my mind, body and spirits. Having William by my side is a great source of comfort.

And reassurance to you, as is the love, support and kindness that is being shown by so many of you. It means so much trust because we hope that you will understand that as a family we now need some time, space and privacy while I complete my treatment My work has always brought me a deep.

Sense of joy, and I look forward to being back when I'm able. But for now, I must focus on making a full recovery at this time. I'm also thinking of all those whose lives have been affected by cancer. For everyone.

Facing this disease, in whatever form. Please do not lose faith or hope. You are not alone. It's a very powerful message, isn't it? And it does explain, doesn't it? But the reason why we haven't seen her. She needed time to recover from what we now know is major abdominal surgery.

She and her family needed time to decompress She needed to start treatment. She started chemo in February, and they wanted to wait until now because the kids broke up from school today. So hopefully all those people.

Are making all those speculative comments now. Have their answer. So Max explained that was recorded at Kensington Palace. That is where they currently reside, is it not? Well, they're currently in Windsor. They're offices in Kensington Palace. So they I mean, one of the things.

I'm being told is that, you know, we have to respect our privacy at this point. At this point, the kids start a school holiday. She thinks it's really important to keep a regular routine. She will be out and about.

She doesn't want people taking photos of her. She wants people to give them time. And so they want it to be transparent as possible, but they need to put the kids first. And it's been a huge amount to take on this. Also, this chemo's going to last a while.

The recovery is going to last a while. We're not going to see her for a while. She may choose to appear at events but she's not going to be coming back to work full time for any time soon, I'm told Anderson. All right, Max, if you can standby, I want to bring in Dr.

Sanjay Gupta for just as much medical advice as we can and the information we can get on this. Sanjay, she says that in January, it was major abdominal surgery that she had. She had been told by doctors. They did not believe it was cancerous before the surgery.

It was after the surgery. They found cancer was present. She said she needed time to recover from the major surgery in order to start treatment. Can you talk a little bit about from a medical standpoint, what stands out to you? Yeah, I mean,.

I think the timeline that you just laid out is really interesting and important. I mean, that was a very touching statement, obviously. But we still don't know what kind of cancer this is. As Max mentioned,.

We don't know what stage this is. But January 16th is when we were told she was going in for surgery the next day. We were told that she's probably going to have a somewhat prolonged hospitalization.

And it was almost two weeks, 13 days later that she was discharged. So that was end of January. And then it was end of February, where we now understand she started this chemotherapy. And obviously, we're hearing about this three weeks later for all the reasons she mentioned.

One thing. They use this term preventive chemotherapy therapy in the statement, which I think is a very non-medical term. I mean, you don't give chemotherapy preventatively. She has cancer. We don't know what kind of cancer it is.

And this is typically something that's referred to as adjuvant chemotherapy, meaning something alongside the surgery now that's been given. But you know what stands out to me is that, you know, it's very touching. But we don't know the cancer. We don't know the staging.

We did not hear anything from the medical team saying, hey, look, we expect a full recovery. She obviously has said that. But it's there's a lot of questions, I think, that still remain that need to be answered, I think, in some way. And so just talk a little bit.

About chemotherapy. Again, we don't know what the what type of cancer is or how. Right. But what is sort of in general, how does chemotherapy work? Someone have to go to a hospital for that? Is that something that can be done privately at their at their residence?.

What sort of, you know, effect does it have Yeah, I mean, there's you know, these are medications that are typically given in the bloodstream. Sometimes they can be given as a pill or orally if it's given in the bloodstream,.

Then people do typically go to the hospital. Of course, we're talking about the royal family. So I think anything probably is possible for the royal family in terms of doing it more privately. But as Max said, it can be several weeks of.

Of these therapies and that they're designed like the basic notion, as we did the operation Now we find cancer. There's likely to be some cancer that is remaining in the body. Let's give chemotherapy to try and target those remaining cells.

That that's the basic sort of idea behind chemo. But I almost can't say anything more than that because we don't know what kind of cancer, we don't know what stage, we don't know what the chemotherapy is. And we don't know even you know,.

What type meaning what you need to be. Even an outpatient setting in the hospital. And just in terms of I mean, how arduous is it between. I mean, I know people have had chemotherapy and it's incredibly debilitating. Is that always the case?.

Not not necessarily always the case. And there are some that are far more debilitating than others. And I want to be just really careful, because, again, we don't there's so many things we don't know. But one of the things that you think.

About with cancer cells is that they divide very rapidly. Okay. So you're targeting cells that are dividing very rapidly. That's what chemotherapy does. What other cells divide very rapidly in your body, the cells that create your hair,.

For example, which is why people may lose hair. The cells inside your intestines divide very rapidly, which is why people often get sick. They feel nauseated when they take chemotherapy. But that's not all chemotherapy is. We don't know which ones.

We don't know. Again, I'm repeating myself. Don't know which cancer or what stage. So it's very hard to speculate what this chemotherapy would do to her, how often she'll need it, how long she'll need it. Maybe we'll get more of those details.

Forthcoming. And Max Foster, if you're still with us. Just remind us, when Kate was in the hospital at the same time that King Charles was in the hospital. At what stage did he announce that he was being treated for, I believe was for prostate cancer?.

And obviously, Kate has made the point that when prior to the surgery, they did not believe that there was cancer present prior to the abdominal surgery that she said she had Yeah. There's there's no sign.

That it was cancer before they went. And it was it's exactly strangely the same situation. So they both went into hospital. Tests were done in hospital, and they discovered cancer afterwards. So it was after she left the hospital, as I understand it, went to confirm.

I don't think that she actually heard, but she's in hospital. So, you know, this major abdominal surgery and then finding out. So that's how we understand the process works. They are not going to give us any more information.

They are not going to reveal the type of cancer, but they are going to give updates when there are updates to give. We've had this before. We understand. But this is as far as they're going to go for now in terms of information. And she will appear,.

I think at some point we were expecting to see these two services next weekend. That's not going to happen, I'm told. But there will be appearances and people will be following incredibly closely. I'm told she is in good spirits, Anderson.

So that's positive. But I'm really getting the impression the priority hasn't actually been strangely. It's been the kids. It's been such a shock to the couple. And then trying to get the kids to understand the young kids and for them not to receive any of the news about that whilst they were at school.

So they broke up today and they're now able to get together properly as a family and they really want to get back to normality. So they this is why they're calling for this privacy. They want to.

Carry on with their normal lives. They don't want people filming them. They're actually asking all the media organizations not to share any of that sort of footage. So there's a huge amount of interest, but we now know why we haven't seen it so long.

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