On Wednesday, Sarah Ferguson was joined by her daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, as she made her first visit to a cancer hospital since she was treated for two forms of the disease herself. As longtime honorary patrons of the Teenage Cancer Trust, the trio visited a ward at London’s University College Hospital which gets financial support from the charity.
Ferguson, who has been involved with the charity for 35 years, said it was her first opportunity to teen patients since her own diagnosis. “This is the first chance I’ve had to visit a unit since my own cancer diagnoses, and meeting young people with cancer is always an incredibly moving experience,” she said in a statement after the visit. “It’s incredibly important to me to try to amplify the voices and experiences of people with cancer who receive less attention, whose voices are not listened to and who can be overlooked.”
During Wednesday’s visit to the hospital, they spoke with current and former patients, including Lennon Pearson, an 18-year-old from Essex who was diagnosed with Lymphoma in January. “You don’t meet royalty every day, and it’s good that they are visiting to raise awareness,” he said. “There’s a lot of negativity around cancer so trying to stay as positive as you can is important.”
In an essay for The Times earlier this week, Ferguson noted she got involved with cancer charities because both her father and stepfather died from the disease. She first announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2023, after she underwent a mastectomy. In January 2024, months before King Charles III and Kate Middleton shared their own diagnoses, she shared that she was being treated with skin cancer. In October, she shared an update about improvements in her health. “I’ve been told by my physicians that I shouldn’t use the phrase ‘cancer free,’ but treatment has been successful and tests show there has been no spread or recurrence,” she said. “I’m reconciled to the fact that I will have to have checks for the rest of my life.”
Though Ferguson has been divorced from Prince Andrew since 1996, she still holds the title of the Duchess of York. Though she is no longer a senior royal, she has held onto a few of the patronages that that she was given during her time in the royal family, including the Teenage Cancer Trust. Neither Eugenie nor Beatrice are official working members of the family, but they have also sought their own charitable titles and occasionally host royal engagements, including a Buckingham Palace garden party last spring.
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