For Charles, as for all cancer victims, family will be key

Jack the Insider reflects on his own cancer battle following King Charles' diagnosis.

There is nothing like a cancer diagnosis to remind us of the fragility of life. King Charles III, who sat next in the line of succession for more than 70 years, has been handed a raw deal.

Speaking to friends in London overnight, the prevailing view was one of circumstantial cruelty. After seven decades of waiting, a mere 18 months as king and less than a year since his coronation, his reign now may be curtailed by serious illness or death.

It is worth remembering he is just one of 400,000 people in the UK who will be diagnosed with cancer in any given year, of whom 190,000 will die from it.

Statistics point to an even-money chance of Charles surviving the next 10 years. There are other factors that come into consideration. His age, his general fitness, possibly even his family history of longevity.

There is no figuring cancer. It is always undeserved. Charles’s great-great grandfather, Edward VII who waited 60 years to become king, was obese and smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. Edward suffered from skin cancer which manifested in a basal-cell carcinoma on his face but this was treated successfully by radium. The cause of his death was most likely ischaemic heart disease. His 10-year reign came to an end with his death at 68.

Cancer doesn’t acknowledge circumstance. It does not recognise wealth, status or class. While it can be predetermined by high-risk behaviours or genetic propensity, it is not subject to the laws of probability. Rather, it is based on the abstruse nature of cellular biology, starting with a single human cell not normally visible without an electron microscope that mutates and proliferates abnormally to the formation of a tumour.

In short, it is a roll of the cosmic dice, a hard eight turning up where a more likely seven should have appeared, perhaps best summed up by a cartoon I came across on the pages of National Lampoon magazine where God’s index finger emerges from the clouds, pointing at a group of people: “Eeni, meeni, miney, cancer.”

When I was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2017, I spent more than a few moments mired in self-pity. I mourned my bad luck, only to be reminded of the vagaries of cell structure and function by an oncologist who spoke of the “miracle” that it doesn’t happen more often.

I can attest to the maelstrom of emotions the monarch will be experiencing. There was no sense of impending mortality. There is fear, not of death but of process and where it might lead – from the scarring of radiotherapy, the drip, drip of chemotherapy poisoning, the unpredictability of immunological treatments designed to supercharge the immune system, or the blunt force of a surgeon’s knife.

I often tell people that if they want to see courage manifest, take a stroll through an infusion ward at a cancer centre. There they will find people of all shapes, sizes and colours sitting patiently and hopefully, enduring the torment of chemotherapy. It is not a spectator sport, of course, but having walked through the infusion centre at the Crown Princess Mary Cancer Centre at Westmead on numerous occasions, the experience is both humbling and inspiring.

I found it easier to articulate my emotional response to my cancer diagnosis in writing in ways that I now find vaguely embarrassing. I felt then that I had found some truth and an emotional pathway but I was hideously self-absorbed.

I spoke bluntly to my children about what I thought would happen and where it might end, including the rather obvious denouement of death.

I failed to realise I was traumatising my children, sharing my doubts with them. To this day, they reference that grim family meeting where I bluntly spelled out my ­options as their darkest day.

Charles will be beset by well-wishers. There will be the awkward utterances of sympathy and polite urging for the King to “be positive”. There may well be, as I discovered, others who push potions, unguents and home remedies. Optimism is overrated and snake oil belongs in the bin.

The trick is to develop the trust to put one’s life in the hands of medical specialists and allow them to do their jobs. It requires faith while the mind screams for an easier way out.

There is one thing the King can do and it is not a power bestowed upon him by church or state. His family, like so many, has been characterised by dysfunction. I found that a man with a cannula in his arm or bearing a raw surgical scar has a certain authority. Petty feuds, ugly jealousies, self-exiles and banishments can be put to rest in times of great stress.

It is an authority, not of a king or a patriarch, but of a man facing an extraordinary personal crisis who seeks to reunite his disparate family. Cancer is like hand luggage. It remains with the sufferer for life, regardless of prognosis, ­recovery or remission. Charles III may not seek to be defined by his cancer, but he will be. These are dark days for him where uncertainty appears at every turn for months and years. As bleak as his outlook might be, his illness may well be the making of him.

For kings and commoners alike, the love of family is the apex of a life well lived, no matter its duration.