Queen Mother’s cancer ops kept secret from world, reveals biography
By ANIThursday, September 17, 2009
LONDON - The official biography of the Queen Mother has revealed that she underwent operations for colon cancer and breast cancer during her life, which was kept secret from the public.
The book ‘Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Official Biography’, written by William Shawcross, tells that she was successfully treated for colon cancer in December 1966 and breast cancer in July 1984.
In 1966, the Queen’s office at Clarence House misinformed the press that she had undergone an abdominal operation to relieve a partial obstruction.
In fact, she was admitted to the King Edward VII Hospital in Marylebone, central London, for both the operations, the Daily Express reports.
She had a tumour removed on December 10 that year in an operation by a team of surgeons, led by Sir Ralph Marnham.
However, newspapers had speculated back then that the obstruction was in her intestine or colon.
In the book Shawcross writes: “The rumours that the operation had included a colostomy persisted. Many people who had to endure that operation themselves derived comfort from the belief that even someone with as active a life as Queen Elizabeth could manage so well after such a difficult procedure.”
The book further claims that on July 30, 1984, the Queen Mother was quietly admitted to the same hospital to undergo a simple excision for carcinoma of the breast.
She apparently came out of the hospital on August 2, just before her 84th birthday. (ANI)
