'Cancer is a great leveller, but there are aspects the King won't get to see'

14 February 2024 , 22:54

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The King's cancer battle may not be entirely the same as that experience by the regular person, Mark Steel says (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

At one point during the extended 24-hour King’s cancer rolling news coverage, the BBC gave us a live update that said “Buckingham Palace tourists say ‘we think he’ll pull through’.”

Oh thank the Lord for that, because theirs is the opinion that matters. I was the same when I was diagnosed with cancer in the neck last September.

The consultant said I had a high chance of recovery, so I replied “never mind what you reckon mate, I need to know what a Japanese bloke outside Buckingham Palace thinks”. At any time of day a variety of news channels tells us “We have over 300 reporters covering the King’s condition including Sophie Buttersquash who has a cancer cam inside the royal sphincter. Sophie, have there been any movements during the last hour?”

Then there’s 40 minutes of drone footage of Buckingham Palace, so you expect them to say “We’re hearing that the cancer hasn’t spread to the building. There was some concern it could have moved on to a chandelier but we’ve been assured it’s been given the all-clear so that’s very good news indeed”.

Unlike the Buckingham Palace tourists, I have no idea of the King’s prospects. But I expect there will be some aspects of cancer that most patients experience, that he’ll avoid.

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‌For example, after I discovered the lump that shouldn’t be there, I was told the local hospital would contact me with a date for a scan. But after two weeks I hadn’t heard, so I rang the doctor, who said to call the hospital.

Comedian Mark Steel who is receiving treatment for cancer (Paul Grover/REX/Shutterstock)

I was producing mucus by the bucketload

So I called and had to press 1, then 3, then 8 and 5 and 5 again and then the phone went dead. So I called again and was put through to a laundry room and tried again until I thought “This lumpy gland better turn out to be life-threatening after all this trouble”.

I doubt whether the reporters on the King’s condition will ever say “I have some breaking news. The King has called the hospital and is still waiting to be put through as there’s been a shortage of staff for the last five years. Earlier he called and pressed 2, then 4, then 4 again and was put through to the maternity ward by mistake. I’m told he shouted ‘Confounded ghastly system’ but that is as yet unconfirmed”.

Finally I had the scan and was told to come back for a biopsy, but it took more mornings of calling and waiting and calling. Then they lost my biopsy altogether on the way to the lab. I wondered if this was because they’d “outsourced” the transport to Deliveroo. And my biopsy got mixed up with someone’s chilli sauce, so my cells were poured on to some poor sod’s burrito.

The King, I would imagine, will avoid anything like these moments of stress. For example, I doubt he’ll be driving round and round the car park looking for a space, panicking that he’ll miss an appointment as he shouts “Why is there no room for a horse-drawn carriage in this frightful carbuncle of a building?”

For me, the process changed after I was diagnosed with secondary cancer in the lymph glands. Since then the treatment and care from the Health Service has been bewilderingly amazing and I doubt whether even a King could hope for better.

This is where cancer is a great leveller. All cancers, I was told often by doctors and surgeons, are treatable, and most, if caught early, are curable. That was a huge and welcome surprise. When I was growing up, we believed a diagnosis of cancer meant you wouldn’t get past the weekend.

But oh blimey, the treatment. I had six weeks of radiotherapy and chemotherapy and can’t imagine these will ever catch on as recreational drugs.

Here’s just one of many side-effects: Just before Christmas, I became a machine for producing mucus at an industrial level, like when Texans 100 years ago struck oil. It spurted in all directions. It seemed there was an inexhaustible supply, with a greedy production manager demanding the flow couldn’t ever stop.

Then on Christmas Day the mucus supply INCREASED, which I didn’t think was possible. It must have won contracts around the world, to supply mucus to countries that don’t have their own natural supply, with a pipeline from my sink to Holland or Argentina.

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So a coughing session could go on for eight hours at a time. But it was a tease. Each cough began as a thin little wheeze, that felt like it could be sorted with one clear of the throat. But it was like a little thread of cotton that you try to unpick, before discovering you’ve unravelled an entire pullover.

This could go on all night, making it impossible to sleep or even to think about anything apart from coughing. It felt as if the cough was alive inside me, waiting to escape like the monster in Alien.

If Charles has to go through something like that, it won’t be much comfort if he gets to kneel over a gold-plated toilet, or if after he’s been sick, a butler says “Would His Majesty care for another box of tissues?” You get through it, because you have to, and one day it stops so now I’m so ecstatic with life simply because I go all day without coughing or spitting.

Charles’s treatment will obviously depend on where his cancer is. But wherever it is, he’s likely to face some brutal moments. The strange part is that underneath the discomfort, the vomiting, the burning where the radiotherapy is directed and the constant sickness, I was happy to tick off each day, aware this was what the wonderful army of consultants, nurses, dieticians, porters, surgeons and chemists had put together to save my life.

The King’s status, as a divinely appointed ruler, will grant him countless advantages. But as his body isn’t really divine but thoroughly human, he will have to face the same nastiness that anyone with this sickness has to put up with. In some ways he will never have been further from his subjects. In other ways, maybe he’ll be closer to them than ever before.

Mark Steel