Kate Middleton health update: Princess of Wales describes “rollercoaster” cancer recovery during Essex hospital visit

Kate Middleton has described her recovery from cancer as a “rollercoaster”, saying the disease is “life changing” for both patients and their loved ones. The Princess of Wales was speaking during a visit to a hospital in Essex on Wednesday (July 2).

Kate discussed treatment and the importance of holistic cancer care with patients, volunteers and staff at Colchester Hospital’s Wellbeing Centre, having herself being diagnosed with the disease in March last year.

The 43-year-old praised the centre’s “holistic” approach to the support it offers patients, relatives and carers which includes counselling and dietary advice. While chatting to a group of the centre’s users, volunteers and staff, the princess said: “It’s life changing for anyone, through first diagnosis or post-treatment and things like that, it is life changing experience both for the individual patient but also for the families as well and actually it sometimes goes unrecognised, you don’t necessarily, particularly when it’s the first time, you don’t appreciate how much impact it is going to have.

“You have to find your new normal and that takes time. Someone described the sort of healing, recovery journey to me as being like a sort of zig-zag.

“It’s a rollercoaster, it’s not one smooth plain, which you expect it to be, but the reality is it’s not, you go through hard times and to have a place like this, to have the support network, whether its through creativity and singing or gardening, whatever it might be, is so valuable and it’s great that this community has it. It would be great if lots of communities had this kind of support.”

She added: “There is this whole phase when you finish your treatment that you, yourself, everybody expects you, right you’ve finished your time, go, you’re better, and that’s not the case at all.”

Keeping cool in a neutral striped linen jacket and coordinating striped shirt, paired with chocolate brown cigarette style trousers and her favourite Veja trainers, the princess was ready to get her hands dirty - literally - as she then got to work in the newly created garden at the hospital.

Braving the drizzly weather, Kate planted several coral-pink Catherine’s Roses in the hospital’s Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Wellbeing Garden. The RHS named the flower after the princess to raise awareness of the role that spending time outdoors plays in supporting people’s mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing.

Foregoing gardening gloves which were offered to her, she knelt down to plant the roses using her bare hands and a trowel to pat down the soil alongside Adam Frost, the award-winning garden designer who led the design of the space.

Opened in July last year, the wellbeing garden at the hospital offers a relaxing and restorative space for NHS staff, patients and visitors.