Sarah Ferguson is not undergoing treatment after being diagnosed with skin cancer earlier this year.
“I have to be checked regularly and I have to put cream on my face to get out past sun damage, which means big blisters on my face, chest and hands for three weeks,” Ferguson, 64, told HELLO! in her cover story, published on Sunday, June 2. “But I’m not doing immunotherapy, taking any drugs or doing chemotherapy, for which I’m very grateful.”
It’s the second cancer battle within a year for the Duchess of York, who is mother to Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, her daughters with ex-husband Prince Andrew. Us Weekly confirmed in June 2023 that Ferguson was diagnosed with breast cancer. Six months later, a rep for Ferguson revealed that she had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma.
“Her dermatologist asked that several moles were removed and analyzed at the same time as the Duchess was undergoing reconstructive surgery following her mastectomy, and one of these has been identified as cancerous,” a rep for the royal family member said in a statement to Us in January.
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Ferguson said in her HELLO! profile that doctors have deterred her from using the phrase “cancer-free,” but she’s keeping a positive outlook regarding her health after beating both breast and skin cancer.
“I have the most exceptional family and I have an extraordinarily great team and I have an enormous ability to turn to joy,” she told the publication, noting that she’s always told daughters the truth about her health journey.
“I have always brought up my girls to be so honest and frank that they know I’m going to tell it to them straight, however difficult it is,” Ferguson told HELLO! “So, when they said: ‘Mummy, tell us the absolute truth — have they got all the cancer out?’ and the answer was yes, they knew they were safe.”
Beatrice, 35, revealed that her mother was “all in the clear” health-wise during a recent TV appearance.
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“She’s such a phenomenal icon. As a mum she’s been amazing, she’s been through so much and her sense of purpose and resilience really keeps me going,” Beatrice said during the May 6 episode of U.K.’s This Morning. “At 64 she’s thriving; she’s been through so much, but I think really now she’s coming into her own.”
It seems Ferguson agrees with her daughter.
“I think it woke me up,” she told HELLO! about her cancer diagnoses. “It gave me a swift kick in the butt and told me: ‘Right, are you going to start living now, at 64, or are you going to keep on not quite living?’ You don’t have to be what everyone wants you to be: just be yourself.”
