King Charles was “seen” on Friday. These are photos of Charles being driven from Clarence House to Highgrove. He rolled down the window so people could see that he’s “fine” after his brief hospitalization last Thursday. What’s hilarious, to me, is that Charles didn’t bother smiling or waving to the crowd or the photographers. Charles looks like my little panther kitty right before he horks on the carpet. Seriously though, Charles looks really nauseous. I guess that was the medical situation, the side effects of Charles’s cancer treatments – Charles was/is feeling quite pukey. I wonder if the first thought was “this is about his cancer treatments” but the doctors possible found that he just has a stomach bug. It might explain why the palace is mostly just shrugging and saying he’s taking the weekend off and what else can be done.
The King waved happily as he drove off to spend the weekend at his beloved Highgrove retreat yesterday, after assuring his concerned family that he was doing well. Smiling, Charles, 76, made a point of putting down his car window so he could be seen by the crowds as he left Clarence House for a long weekend in the country after being hospitalised on Thursday suffering side effects from his ongoing cancer treatment. Sources have insisted to the Mail that the incident was a ‘minor bump’ in His Majesty’s ‘very positive road to recovery’.
However, some family members – particularly his wife, the Queen – have also urged him again to ‘slow down’ in light of this latest ‘blip’. Camilla, 77, has made no secret of her frustration that he’s continued his punishing schedule throughout the last year. She has frequently told well-wishers that while her husband ‘is doing fine’ he ‘just won’t listen and do what he’s told!’
A source says: ‘She understands her husband better than anyone and knows he isn’t happy unless he is working. But she wishes, for his sake, he would just slow down a bit.’ It is a concern shared by other family members, including his son, Prince William.
Buckingham Palace has not disclosed what form of cancer he has, nor the treatment he has received. A source said: ‘It’s partly a question of his privacy and partly because we all know what happens when people start asking Dr Google about what a particular prognosis is. But it is also because the King genuinely feels incredibly positive and wants to be able to reach out with his message about living and working with the disease to people with all different types of cancers, receiving all different types of treatments, not just his own.’
Indeed, the Mail understands that His Majesty is, for the foreseeable future, a person ‘living with cancer’. He is receiving regular – mainly weekly – treatment to ensure that his personal battle has the ‘best possible outcome’, although his medical team are able to comfortably pause it as they did when he travelled to Australia and Samoa last year.
On Thursday he had undergone this routine treatment ahead of a busy afternoon of meetings when he began to feel unwell, suffering what the palace described as ‘temporary side effects’. He required a short period of observation in hospital and left The London Clinic, where he was initially diagnosed last year, by car yesterday afternoon to recuperate at Clarence House. It is understood that he enjoyed dinner with his wife and was back ‘working away as usual’ in the evening.
As I said, this reads more like “he had a nasty stomach bug” rather than “cancer treatment side effects,” but who knows. There was a particularly bad bug going around the mid-Atlantic in February, maybe it made its way to England. The Times said that Charles left Clarence House mid-morning on Friday and planned to spend the weekend in his garden at Highgrove (barfing in some bushes, by the looks of it). The Times is also leaning into the narrative that no one can get Charles to slow down, but it’s fine because he genuinely enjoys working. Which I think is true – he would be like one of those newly-retired people who ages rapidly without anything to occupy his time. Also: I guess Camilla didn’t join him in Highgrove? She was probably at Ray Mill this weekend. Camilla also didn’t go to the hospital with Charles. Divorce Watch!!
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
