Spanish press reporting Kate was extremely ill

[vaporrub]

I don’t know how credible this is because I saw it on Twitter…

But apparently the media in Spain have reported that Catherine’s surgery was not actually planned, did not go smoothly and she was actually very sick/possibly in a coma for a period of time. And there has been a press blackout in the UK.

Could there be any truth in this? I’m struggling to see WHY something like that would be ‘hidden’ anyway 🤔

Was it bottom repair or was it a fanny facelift?

These are important questions

I speak Spanish fairly fluently and the illness named in El Pais - which is a reputable broadsheet and not a gutter rag - is what I was thinking too.

Posters who cannot conceive of non-cancerous abdominal surgery which takes 12 weeks to recover from have clearly never known anyone who needed a bowel resection and temporary (or permanent) stoma.

I wish her a speedy recovery from whatever is causing her health issues. The photo is really unfortunate, I think that the editing was to get the best photos of the kids all on the same image. It was handled badly. The wild theories about her being dead, body doubles and the rest of it are just unhinged.

If Kate, with her extreme high profile and nature of her job has Crohn’s (I have it) then I salute her for managing her public role so well. It’s a horrible, painful, exhausting and often humiliating disease that has the added extra of other people’s mockery and disgust sometimes. If she has it - and I have no idea obviously! - then I understand her not wishing to reveal it and whatever is wrong anyway, she should bloody well be allowed her privacy.

Nobody except those close to her knows what is wrong with her. I do not know why people keep speculating.

Well yes, if it’s a facelift we will soon find out when she reappears in public. Easter is only 2 weeks away.

To add: I’m left in tears several days a week by this disease, and 50% of that is caused by trying to hide the difficult effects of the disease (putting it delicately!) while at work. The other 50% is the sheer exhaustion and grinding pain. Leave sick women to handle it and don’t hound them, please 😢 not saying she has this btw but responding to one of the rumours. My plea applies to whatever she has.

I don't think that's true.

This is a masterclass in how not to manage PR.

The mistakes "the Palace" have made here are unbelievable starting with making an anouncement at all. It's fairly obvious that this was not 'planned surgery' because if it was, it would have been planed for August when everyone is on holiday and it was more disguisable.

It's perfectly plausible that foreign media will report information that the UK media will not for all sorts of reasons - law of privacy in the UK is very strongly in support of the individual now even a public figure so UK media would be legally advised against revealing info about her medical condition even if they had it; plus the whole 'relations with the palace' - generally the UK media operates on a you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours royal relationship situation.

As someone up thread has said El Pais is a respected broadsheet so I'd incline to believe the core of their story is true even if some parts exaggerated or talked up by a source.

Ah but it's "not cancer" so why aren't you out and about ?

(Joking. I know only too well from a close relative how debilitating it is and it is one of the many reasons I can't understand why "not cancer" was a thing the press were saying. It's not a dichotomy where cancer is always gravely serious and everything else is mild. Crohn's and so many other conditions can be frightening, deeply traumatic and life threatening/life limiting)

@Branleuse it is true, at least some of the newspapers. I was up early that day and went to the newsagents at 7am ish and bought a paper. They were saying she had broken her arm. The board outside the shop also said this. I remember going home and saying to DH - oh no we are going to hear about her broken arm for months.

@tryingtoescape I know a few people with Crohn's and it can be hugely debilitating. One of DS's friends was diagnosed about age 8 and had a feeding tube for months. Another friend's bowel is so badly damaged that she now has a permanent stoma. A third wasn't diagnosed until she was in her 30s, and lost an awful lot of weight before they got the bottom of what was wrong. She has to be very careful about what she eats, and has had the "moon face" from steroids after surgery.

It's an awful thing and I there is so little campaigning and fundraising on this issue. Not fashionable, probably because it involves poo.

Even if this is not what is wrong with Kate, any raising of the profile and greater public understanding of how Crohn's affects people is a good thing.

@CassandraWebb I agree. Cancer can be fairly mild and easily treated.

@Misthios I know crohns does not get lots of attention, but it does get more attention than many illnesses as young attractive people can have it.

The broken arm story is true, I remember it as clear as day...

Agreed. Crohn's and so many other conditions that involve brutal treatment, isolation, embarrassment, a real risk of death etc but these patients rarely get sympathy or awareness or companies falling over themselves to raise money etc. I have seen first hand the savagery of Crohn's.

I'd love the equivalent of maggies centres etc for people suffering from conditions that are just as debilitating and life limiting as cancer.

Prince William's new Private Secretary, Ian Patrick, is a trustee of the Crohn's and Colitis UK charity. Maybe we are going to see more attention on this illness in the near future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Patrick

This links to El País from Colombia, not the widely respected broadsheet from Spain. Not sure how reputable it is but it just mentions vague “sources” and “rumours” about Kate having Crohn disease.

I’m not sure because I know that in other parts of the world they found out she was seriously injured while over here we were still asleep. So unless other countries were more on top of it, that sounds a bit behind the eight ball for a 7 am bulletin.

Interesting points about the early coverage of Diana's death. I was a child and we were in New Zealand (so it was the middle of the day rather than the middle of the night), my brother told me Princess Diana had been shot dead. He was watching the news, by the time I went into the living room they were announcing she'd been shot but she was expected to survive. We'd been at Disney in the summer in Florida and Versace had been shot in Miami just a few weeks earlier. As a family we watched the news (we turned over to BBC world service) and spoke about whether it was a madman inspired by Versace's assassination and various assassination injuries. Then the story changed to a car accident and we started to see the footage from the tunnel but the injuries were reported as not life threatening and that went on for quite a bit. Then totally out of the blue the newsreader announced they were getting reports that Diana had died. It was all a jumbled mess. We didn't believe it until it was confirmed. Within the space of about an hour we'd gone from Diana was shot, to sustained mild shoulder injuries in a car accident to dead. It was crazy. I can well believe that papers had already been printed with the wrong news. The press conference officially announcing her death was given at 6am French time. I think the British Press didn't know she'd died until 4am.

Yes off you pop @CassandraWebb , off you pop and set up a Crohn's centre in every town/city in the UK, with no funding, no public support for an unfashionable medical condition and no awareness. No need to pack in your job, will take you five minutes. 🙄🙄

FFS.

I just looked on twitter. I honestly feel so disturbed and sick from what I read, the absolute hate. People saying this is karma as she hated Megan, that they hope she gets left in the back when rose is queen, that William has hurt her, she’s dead, and she deserved it as she hates Megan. And that’s stuff I can repeat. Some of it I can’t even bring myself to write.

ive never honestly read such utter utter sickness being spewed on line. And they all seem to be posting it as some form of karma due to Megan markle, where apparently it’s all Kate’s fault.

I just honestly don’t understand how people can think this stuff never mind write it. Or how it’s allowed to stand,

honestly it’s so so bad, just vile hate. It’s horrendous to think these people are sitting at their keyboards spewing this stuff out. What’s wrong with people they do this. 😢

I've though about it, genuinely, but I can't at the moment as I'm very unwell and on a huge dose of immune supressants etc. but yes, i am desperate to feel well enough to start looking at how to do this.

😂

It's horrible. If it were any other person, it would be considered harassment.