Sarah Ferguson has undergone successful surgery after a diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer, her spokesperson announced Sunday, who added that the operation took place at King Edward VII Hospital in London earlier this week, and she is now recovering at home.
“The Duchess is receiving the best medical care and her doctors have told her that the prognosis is good. She is now recuperating with her family,” the representative added, per People. “The Duchess wants to express her immense gratitude to all the medical staff who have supported her in recent days.”
In a previously recorded episode of her podcast, Tea Talks With the Duchess & Sarah, released early Monday, Ferguson spoke about the diagnosis, which happened during a routine mammogram. “It’s very important that I speak about it,” she said in conversation with her co-host, Sarah Thomson. “I am telling people out there because I want every single person that is listening to this podcast to go get checked, go get screened and go do it.”
She thanked her sister, Jane Ferguson, for pushing her to go to the exam even though she considered canceling it. “It was after a bank holiday, and I live in this area, in the Windsor area, and it was a hot day, and I didn’t feel like going to London,” Ferguson said. “My sister, who’s wonderful, from Australia—I always normally do what she says because she gets so cranky. She said, ‘No, go. I need you to go. I need you to go.’”
In 2003, Ferguson lost her father, Ronald Ferguson, to prostate cancer. In the podcast, she remembered that her father participated in a 1999 campaign to raise awareness about the disease. “My father died of prostate cancer and it was very interesting because he went on the radio and he said on the radio, ‘Please, please, please go and get checked. It doesn’t matter, go and get checked,’” she said.
She also mentioned her decades of work with the Teenage Cancer Trust, which she has supported since its founding in 1990, and why her daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie also decided to get involved with the charity. “I brought my girls on their birthday. The 18th birthday parties were at a Teenage Cancer unit so that they could see that they’ve got so much to give and they could really help,” she said. “When I took Beatrice and Eugenie—separately, there’s two years between them—to the teenage cancer units, they’ve since become ambassadors for life. They work tirelessly for Teenage Cancer. But what it taught them was how brave, and how we must talk about things.”
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