Doctor shares biggest takeaway from Kate’s cancer diagnosis

CNN's Max Foster is live outside

Buckingham Palace for us right now.

Max, what else

are you hearing from the palace tonight

about Princess Catherine's condition?

Not to mention

the timing of this announcement.

So we're not going

be told exactly what form of cancer

it is, the timing.

She referred to it

that this is about the kids.

They she revealed today that she had

major abdominal surgery,

not just abdominal surgery.

So she had to recover from that.

Then the news that tests

out of that surgery

showed that she had cancer.

They needed to decompress

that as a family.

The kids have been at school until today.

They've been trying.

They didn't want the kids to

have lots of news coverage whilst

they were at school

with all the other kids

speaking to their kids.

So they wanted to wait

until they left school,

which happened today.

So they were picked up today

and they won't be having

the TV's on tonight.

This is all a bit about

trying to make sense of what happened.

Start the treatment.

She started chemo at the end of February,

I'm told.

And then trying to,

you know, manage this for the kids

as much as anything else.

Once William

and Kate can make sense of it

and then present it to the kids

and then try to protect them

as much as possible from

all this speculation online,

which has been

really hurtful for the family,

as I understand it.

But they were particularly worried

about the kids finding out that way.

And we now know why we weren't being told

what the issue was

and what she was suffering from

in hospital.

Max.

Princess Catherine

will now be undergoing chemotherapy

at the same time as her

father in law, King Charles.

We don't know what kind of cancer

either one of them has.

What kind of impact

will this have on the monarchy?

A huge impact.

There are four senior

royals,

the king and queen

and the prince and princess.

The king is out of public action.

He's carrying out duties

behind the scenes.

Of course,

we're seeing some images of him now.

The princess is out of action

indefinitely until the doctors

clear her to go back to her

diary of engagements.

We don't know when that's going to be.

We only know that she's

in the early stages of treatment

and she's not going to be comfortable

for some time going out.

The priority for her

is making sure her kids have normality

as much as possible.

So we've all been asked

not to share

any images of them out and about.

They're being very clear.

She is going to be going to hospital.

They are going to be out and about.

They don't want people

sharing those images,

which is why they've been transparent,

as transparent

as they have with us today.

But you've basically

just got the queen at the top fall out.

Leading the charge,

William is going to do what he can,

but it's pretty clear

that he's

making his far family priority as well.

Max Foster outside Buckingham Palace,

thank you so much.

Let's bring in CNN's

Julia Chatterley and Julia.

Princess Catherine's last

public appearance came over Christmas.

That was before

she had this major abdominal surgery

in January.

Can you walk us through

how all of this has unfolded

in recent weeks?

Hey, Josh, I can.

Jake. Sorry, I can.

Christmas, Christmas Day.

Brits always watch them at

their church service.

We saw her looking healthy, vibrant,

nothing wrong.

Then we didn't see her for three weeks.

Unusual.

But nothing to cause alarm.

Then comes January

the 17th, in fact,

and we got a release

from Kensington Palace.

A statement on social media

saying she'd returned to hospital

for planned abdominal surgery.

That the procedure was successful.

But Kate would be in hospital

for two weeks,

and it was that two weeks that set off,

I think, alarm bells

and began

the wild speculation

that we've now been talking

about for weeks

about what was wrong with Kate

and what might be happening January 29,

the next important date.

She was been discharged from hospital,

but we didn't see her.

She managed to avoid any press

and any cameras at that stage.

Then March the fourth,

we saw her in a car with her mother.

But again, there was concerns

that perhaps this wasn't

her more speculation

about what was going on.

Then a brief period till March 10th

where Kensington Palace released

that Mother's Day photograph.

Mother's Day in the U.K., March

the 10th of her and her three children.

But within hours,

there was a kill notice issue

due to concerns

that it had been heavily doctored.

The next day, a personal message

from Princess

Kate herself saying, look,

she's an amateur photographer,

that she tinkered with that photograph

and she apologized.

Strange, again,

raising more concerns

and conspiracy theories.

Then last weekend, the media shared

a video

of what was and appeared

to be Kate and William.

Kate looking very healthy,

vibrant, vivacious,

walking at a local farm

near where they're living.

So, again,

that perhaps should have addressed

some of the concerns about her health

and the situation.

It didn't.

Fast forward to today

and now all that wild

speculation has resulted

in what we heard today, of course,

and that's a sad cancer diagnosis.

Julia,

what did you make of how Princess

Catherine decided

to make this announcement

on video by herself with this message

that was personal

and emotional understanding?

I think she showed great strength.

I think she could have sat there,

quite rightly, with her husband,

with Prince William, providing support.

She chose not to do that.

I think you could hear the emotion

in her voice.

She managed to be

and I said it already, both regal

but also vulnerable in the message

that she shared.

And I think for anybody

whose lives been touched by cancer,

they understand the challenge

that she's facing, the challenge

of telling the children,

of trying to protect the children.

And I think even in this statement,

she showed that she's a princess

through and through

by caring in the end

more about other people

that are also suffering this,

rather than just focusing

perhaps on herself,

on her own family's situation.

So very moving, Jake, I'd say.

All right, Julian, generally,

thank you so much.

Joining us now

to discuss the medical aspect of this.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, what's your biggest takeaway

from what we heard from

Princess Catherine today?

I think the biggest takeaway,

obviously, is

the headline that she has cancer.

But that, you know,

that we don't know

what kind of cancer, as you've heard,

we don't know the stage of cancer.

So there is a significant

piece of information.

But there's also a lot we don't know.

We did get a better sense

of the timeline.

And you were talking about this

with Julia

a little bit,

but let me just put this up again, Jake.

Just so you know, a medical standpoint,

it sounds like there was concern

from the start.

We're hearing what we're hearing today.

But even from the start,

they said, look, she's going to be

it's going be a long recovery.

Even when they admitted to the hospital,

they said it's going

be at least two weeks in the hospital,

which is a long time.

And then we know that about a month

after she was discharged

from the hospitals, when she started

what they call

preventative chemotherapy,

that's what we said in the statement.

It's more of an adjuvant chemotherapy.

This idea

that the operation was performed.

We now know that it's cancer.

We have to assume that

there are some cancer cells

that are still remaining.

So we're giving chemotherapy.

So we

we still don't know, Jake, what it is.

We don't know the stage that it is,

but it sounds like it's obviously

something that they're

being aggressive about

and that they have had concern

about for for some time. Jake.

How does a cancer diagnosis work

in this situation?

I mean, we know

she had abdominal surgery, major

abdominal surgery, two surgeons

taking samples for further testing.

Yeah, I think

I think that's that's exactly right.

And again,

that's the part of it when you ask me

what stands out the most.

This is the part that doesn't

quite fit because

going back to the middle of January,

there was obviously significant concern.

You wouldn't just do

sort of exploratory surgery,

looking for cancer.

I think there was

there was a significant concern.

So it sounds like it

then got confirmed that this was cancer.

They weren't sure,

maybe initially,

but it got confirmed

by by looking at those samples.

This is, say,

Jake, under the microscope

after the operation and performed.

And then it might be some time

before you'd actually start chemotherapy,

not allowing someone to heal,

for example, from the operation.

That was about a month

in between the time she was discharged

and she started that therapy.

And she's a Princess Catherine.

She's 42 years old.

She's had three children.

How prevalent are cancer diagnoses

in women her age?

They're

more prevalent in women,

her age versus men.

Her age,

but a lot less prevalent than in women

who are older.

One type of cancer

that we've been hearing a lot more

about starting in younger

people, it's colorectal cancer.

So much so, Jake.

And you probably know this,

but the standard age of screening

that was recommended

as have long been 50 years old,

but organizations came out and said

it probably should be 45

because we're seeing more and more

of these types of cancers

in younger people,

and that's men, men or women alike, Jake.

And again, we don't know.

I just want to be clear.

We don't know

what kind of cancer this is,

but there are certain cancers

that we typically thought

of happening in older

people that now happen in younger people

over the last several decades.